


As One Life Ends Another Begins

by ThornShay



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThornShay/pseuds/ThornShay
Summary: As one life ends, another begins.
Relationships: Steve Burnside/Ada Wong, Steve Burnside/Claire Redfield
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Operation Burnside**

**The Marshlands, West Africa, March 7, 2009**

_I'm so screwed,_ Twenty-eight year old Steve Burnside thought to himself while running through the Marshlands. His black clothing was similar to the ones Wesker wore under his black trench coat, with a pair of black gloves and skull cap to cover his hair. As well as two shoulder holsters on him that held two Beretta 92 FSs that were modified to resemble and perform as Wesker's Samurai Edge. A weapon Steve could never help but to admire. One exception to the model of his weapons were the compensator muzzle breakers he attached.

Steve christened his weapons the "Fire Eater" after a political party from the time leading into the American civil war. It made sense; he was on a course to be using these weapons to commit horrible crimes for Wesker, so it only seemed logical and even fitting to name them after the idiots who had a hand in starting one of the most horrible wars in American history.

 _How could this happen,_ Steve thought to himself as he continued to run, his boots mashing into the ground with great force, as he was running through the Marshlands. Feeling the wind blowing through the sides to his short-cut auburn hair as he did so.

He was unaware of the fate of his commanders Albert Wesker and Excella Gionne. But he believed them to be dead. He lacked any confirmation to this, but he did not require much to know it was more than likely. The BSAA, more specifically Chris, were not known for being _lenient_ on Bioterrorists.

It had only been a few hours since Wesker first took off, aboard the cargo freighter carrying their assault bomber, intended to spread the Uroboros virus before soon word reached back to the base that Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar were on-board the vessel, as well as the news that Jill had been freed of the P30 placed on her chest. Soon after Steve lost contact with Excella, and swiftly after that Wesker took off in the bomber he learned crashed in a nearby volcano.

"I swear, if I ever get the chance, I'm going to make Chris pay for this." Steve swore in a vague threat to the absent enemy. To say that Steve hated the older Redfield, at this point, more than ever would be an understatement.

He could only recall scant details from his life after waking up from the cold grip of death. Revived—changed—and once again alive, he could barely remember much of his old life. He knew that Wesker found him; he was the one to revive Steve to the land of the living. Wesker was the reason he was still alive, the Redfield siblings forgot about him: they condemned him to a future as nothing more than a corpse to be used as a test subject, and to be subjected to experimentation. Then Wesker pushed Raven and Lawson to progress the experiments further before injecting the Wesker virus into his system.

The Tyrant-Veronica virus that he died with was still in his system, its power still existed in him, but so did the Wesker virus. He was stronger and faster than he was before, more than any human could hope to be. His wounds would heal up in a matter of seconds; his blood would combust into fire when removed from his body and on his command. He could not be so easily killed, he was near invincible.

Steve loved Claire; he loved her more than any other woman he knew before. Then in the end he died telling her this, and he thought it was over. Part of him wished it really was. Both his parents were dead; he had noone now, and was all alone in the world before dying. Then he was alive once more with his fate in the hands of a man he believed to be as bad as Umbrella and yet, now, he no longer loathed Wesker like he once had.

He spent a year believing Claire or her brother would come rescue him, but they never did; and he cursed them for it.

From the very moment he was given freedom, Steve continued to frequently tell himself if he ever encountered one of the Redfield siblings again, it would not end well. Wesker made him into someone he could barely recognize when he looked into the mirror, but he gave him purpose—a reason to live. He gave him the power to survive in the world and he was loyal to him for it.

Now, it was all gone; once more, everything good in his life was dead, again. Wesker, the man who trained him to control his powers and looked up to like an older-brother was more than likely now dead.

"Everything I ever loved is gone." Steve lamented to himself, trying to understand how this happened.

"Caleb, where did you and the others go off to?" He asked the absent friends nowhere to be found.

His best friend and other friends and fellow operatives Caleb Wilson and Raymond Vester were nowhere to be found. He was genuinely concerned for Vester's well being, but was more concerned for Caleb. The two of them were as close to brothers as two best friends could ever be. Caleb left the day before for a mission in the US and Raymond went on a mission with Jessica Sherawat in the Ukraine.

His other fellows, the other enhanced operatives of the Hive/Host Capture Force. Steve was not the first- or-the last of the enhanced operatives that Wesker created, but he was more than certainly of the more effective, stronger, and superior of their produced. The others were now gone from their old home. Either they were dead or left a day ahead of the Redfield’s arrival, or even hours.

Then there was Excella, a lover in the casual physical relationship they frequently engaged in, was more than likely dead. He did not love her as he did Claire, but wanted to feel something other than anger and hate, and she would oblige to him. Excella and he did not share an emotional level of intimacy, but Wesker would not show Excella as much affection as she wanted and even she had needs. She was feasibly more attracted to Wesker than Steve, but did not consider him inferior to Wesker. He was more than a physically match for her to be attracted and she found his intelligence to be astonishing. So the first time Steve attempted to gain a personal insight of her as a person and learn useful information for Wesker, with circumstances of the shared conversation at the moment transpiring with Excella pushing him violently against a wall as they began to wildly kiss. A relationship to which they possessed opposite views towards—for Steve it was a distraction from his misery, the melancholy which plagued his mind through the years of his new life—in her eyes, Excella considered him a decent lover. Someone who could keep up with activity through both Tricell and the H.C.F.

His mind began to wander back to her as Steve was slowing his pace in the run "Excella, you may not have been my love, but you still helped me find some measure peace." She was not a woman of good nature like Claire. In fact he could see right off the bat that she was bad, but she did not treat him as a monster like the other humans did. She was part of the reason he was stronger now.

As Steve began to stop in the Marshlands, finding the speed boat that was MORE than likely used by Chris to traverse the Wetlands, he soon catches a glimpse of a helicopter hovering over his head and towards the facility he was fleeing from.

"Damn BSAA dogs," he said to himself as his green eyes were starting to glow, morphing to resemble cat eyes, just like Wesker's—only darker.

He despised the BSAA with a passion; he wanted nothing more than to burn everything they built down. From the moment they first entered the Kijuju zone, he knew they were going to be a problem for them and Wesker, but Albert ordered him not to interfere. To tolerate their encroachment.

Now Steve was left fleeing from his home, as the twilight began to rise and bringing morning with it. He had no idea where to go yet, the out call he made to the other survivors had still remained unanswered since he left the base. And now he was left without his PG67A/W syringes, containing the serum used to keep the T-Veronica and Wesker virus in his system stable. He knew where to find more, and since the injections were more long lasting on him, than Wesker, he had a estimated week to procure more for himself before his body would suffer from the after-effects.

Seating himself in the speed boat, Steve looked out into the distance for the neighboring shore through the swamp lands and prepared to disembark.

**Savanna, A few hours later**

Steve remained quiet with his thoughts, taking the boat to the port of a village where he found the very large Uroboros specimen that Chris and Sheva killed. It was still dawn when he approached the sight, but would not be for long.

A squad of BSAA soldiers was already on the scene, so he attempted to remain out of sight and find a way out of the area. Steve had no problem with swatting the BSAA flies here and now, but he was on a time table and could only go so long without his serum. But the plan to remain undetected was not fruitful, one soldier quickly spotted him.

"Over there!" one soldier shouted while pointing a finger at Steve and then aiming his weapon for his chest.

Steve did not bother to try and hide anymore. Walking out into full view as the other soldier took aim with their weapon Steve remained unfazed as he stared smugly at the men and said "Well, boys, what seems to be the problem?"

The leader of the merry band aiming weapons at Steve then said "This area, along with the rest of the Kijuju zone, is under quarantine by the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance." The man was the no nonsense kind of soldier "State your name and business here."

Steve kept his hands down at first, being smug towards the men before replying "Well I was working security at a nearby Tricell complex, but some asshole who works for the same group as you shut it down. Now I'm trying to find my way home."

Then the commander replies "Tricell is, as of now, under arrest by the BSAA and under investigation. Surrender your weapons and get on the ground, now."

"Oh come on, now, is this any way to treat a complete and total stranger." Steve said, playing his smartass routine. "I mean really, I have just had a lousy day and now you're gonna arrest me."

"Hey smart-ass, that wasn't a request." One of the soldiers said, aiming his weapon farther up to Steve's neck,

"Steve was adamant at first to the order before pretending to comply "Okay, okay. Take it easy." putting his hands on the handles of his weapons, as he prepares to take them out. "I mean it's not like I'm a monster or anything."

Then the soldiers watched as his eyes glowed like a true tyrant, and then one panicked and said before opening fire "He's one of them!"

Steve took the first bullet in the chest and it healed instantly. Then he drew one of his guns and fired a shot, killing the man who put a bullet in him. The commander ordered his men to open fire and they did so. Steve did not waste much time, dodging the bullets as Wesker himself could, before firing two more shots from his pistol, killing the leader in a matter of seconds. Then drew his second weapon.

"Now this is what I call entertainment." He said, firing his weapons at the soldiers. In his time working for Wesker, Steve had come to appreciate a love of battle. He never knew anything more enjoyable than making love to a beautiful woman, like Excella, or Ada: a female agent he worked with, back when he was still working and training with his second mentor Jack Krauser—Though to be fair, he mostly slept with Ada to spite a man named Leon S. Kennedy, who he believed Claire went to for comfort after she thought he was dead. He could not really bring himself to hate the blond agent, completely, and Steve still saw Ada as a beautiful woman and an excellent partner, but part of him still felt a level of betrayal and wanted to do something about it.

His weapons claimed more-and-more victims with each passing second. His lust for battle made him one of the scariest men alive to fight. As he finished off the last of his foes he could soon hear a noise coming from a nearby radio.

Putting his weapons away he walks over to the nearby Humvee and finds the working radio.

"Echo team, come in. This is HQ to Echo team, respond." Steve heard the voice of a man inside the radio say. He took a look back at the dead BSAA commander's name tag, and then grabs the radio from its holster in the vehicle and presses on the button after perfecting his imitation of the dead leader's voice. "This is Echo team, Captain Mercer speaking."

"Captain Mercer, what happened?" the voice asked. "We called out three times already and there was no response."

"Sorry about that. We found some remaining Majini in the area that needed to be dealt with." Steve said as he imitated the dead captain's voice. He had developed an assortment of skill over the years, while working for Wesker in the field.

He was nervous at first, still unsure if they bought it or not, but soon the voice came back "Mercer, has Captain Walker returned, yet, with his squad from clearing-out the Marshlands?"

"Yes. They report that there is no one left inside the marsh and are moving into the nearby village." Steve said.

"Very good, return to the Public assembly in the Kijuju autonomous zone for extraction. The other teams have already arrived." The voice of HQ said with its instructions. "And hurry! We've just received word from air strike command. They plan to bombard the city within a matter of three hours, so move it, double-time."

"Roger that." Steve said with a smirk, before dropping the radio down. He now had a means by which to escape from this place and could use to get as far away as possible. There was also bad news and motivation for him to hurry: an incoming air strike will soon arrive and devastate the area.

As he walked away from the Humvee he took notice to one soldier who was still alive. He then begins to slowly walk over to him, not bothering to draw his weapon. The man was no real threat to him. He had no desire to waste his bullets anyway.

"Wh-why," the man said under his breath as he fought for more."Why?" Steve repeated, not fully understanding the man's question.

Then the man begins to collect more breath before speaking again "Why did you kill us? Why did you cause all this destruction?"

Steve bent down on his knees and said "I don't know, why did you try to kill me?" he grabbed hold of the man's vest to hold him up "Our reasons are probably the same. You view BOW's as monsters to be eradicated, while we see you as a fascist army who would seek to kill us all; even if some of us wanted peace."

The man tried to speak again, but Steve cut him off "Your kind, the BSAA, hunted me for years. I never asked to be made a monster, but the second one of you sees me, your first instinct is to shoot and kill me. I wanted peace, I wanted to live my own life, but you and your kind will not let me." As Steve berated the dying man, he could see the anger in Steve's eyes as he spoke.

Steve never truly desired power. It was given to him, and he had no idea what to do with it. Any time he ever tried to make friends with a normal person, they saw his eyes, or watched his blood combust in the sunlight, and they would run away in fear; calling him a demon or a monster.

"You started this, not me." He said to the man. The dying soldier then replied "You are a threat the humankind, that has to be eradicated, or you will kill, and kill, and kill, until you finally die. That is all your kind is good for."

Steve looked angrily down at the man and said "Maybe so, but you'll never live to see our deaths." Then he grabs on both sides of the man's head and breaks his neck, killing him instantly. He took no joy in this act, only an empty feeling inside remained.

As he continued to look down onto the man's body, Steve felt something stir inside with more than anger as he said "It's true, what Wesker always said; Life is wasted on you Humans; always bringing your species one step closer to the brink of extinction with every passing day."

The young Tyrant then looks over to a nearby set of dead Majini that the squad had already killed before he arrived. He searches through the wreckage, and finds one motorcycle that was in better condition than the others. Setting the new ride up, he pulls back on the throttle and takes off for his next location.

Burning the rubber with his new ride and the dirt and grass road, Steve keeping his eyes locked forward, not wanting to stop for anything at all. He only had a matter of hours to escape from this god-forsaken place.

**Kijuju Autonomous Zone, an hour later.**

Riding through the Savanna, Steve had to take an alternate route to get around the mining portion of the zone. He then was forced to abandon his ride near the outside of the zone.

Putting a hand on his earpiece Steve once more tried to make contact with the other HCF operatives "Wilson, Vester, Sherawat. Is anyone out there? It's Steve Burnside. If there is anyone that can hear me on this channel, please respond. Any and all Hive/Host Capture Force still out there, respond."

Still there was no response, he was beginning to think that his worst fears have been realized and his friends were dead, or there was a jammer in the area blocking his transmissions and no one could hear him.

Upon arriving in the city he was unsure as to how he was going to reach the helicopter without causing too much attention. He soon realized that it was no longer a concern, finding that remnant of the Majini still in town were fighting with the BSAA soldiers.

Seizing the opportunity presented to him, Steve draws both of his pistols and wastes no time in moving through the town. His weapons were reloaded once before he started the onslaught, Steve fires his weapon on the two sides. Not wanting to give any soldier the chance to alert their friends to his whereabouts he shoots the soldiers by the dozen as the seconds go by.

He was good with his weapon and his aim, but his ammo could only last for so long. As he reached the public assembly, Steve was force to rely on one side arm for defense and soon utilized a weapon he took off the dead body of one of the soldiers, an M4A1.

Firing the weapon, Steve entered onto a town turned into the battlefield of a large warzone. The M4A1 had only one magazine inside of it, the same one that was in when Steve took it. The ammo was not ideal, but it was enough for him to get far enough into the public assembly to see the helicopter.

Forced to toss his weapon aside, Steve used his strength when a BSAA soldier came at him with a knife. Disarming the weapon from the man's hands, he lifts him up with one hand. He was capable of doing so much more to this man; he could have punched his arm through him and rid the world of one less fly, but instead made use of him by throwing the soldier at another two soldiers that were coming at him.

Coming to the roof of the small building where the helicopter was preparing to take off, Steve draws the only Samurai Edge that still had ammo inside of it and fires on two of the soldiers remaining in his way before running for the helicopter.

Steve barely managed to jump after it as it took off, his hand being the only thing that held him to his ticket to freedom. Looking down and seeing how very far he was from the ground, Steve quickly pulls himself up into the chopper.

He stood in the helicopter, taking a moment to catch his breath, before looking towards the pilot and co-pilot seat. Seeing that the two were unaware of his presence he quickly decided to take advantage of the opportunity and made a move for the cockpit. The Co-pilot heard him coming and made a move to aim his Glock 19 at him, but Steve punched him hard across the face before he had the chance to put that plan into action.

Before the Pilot had time to react, Steve grabbed him from behind by his jacket and threw him out of the side exit that he came from; sending him out and, thanks to gravity, plummeting down to earth, screaming; where he would die from the impact to the hard ground. Then instantly remembering there was no one piloting this thing, he rushed for the pilot seat, just hoping that he could still remember his flight training from his Uncle Jack and Lt. Stokes.

Not knowing for sure what to do Steve pulled back on the stick, and as if by miracle stability was restored.

"Never doubted myself for a second," He said to himself out-loud. Then the co-pilot started to come to, rubbing his head as it was still throbbing from when he was punched unconscious. Steve wanted to shoot him and be done with it, but his weapons were out of ammo and the weapon the Co-pilot had dropped out of his hand and fell out after Steve punched him out cold.

The Co-pilot knew he was at a disadvantage, even with Steve's weapon not an option at the time he was more than capable of subduing the pilot with his bare-hands, and the man simply said "You know you people can't run forever?"

"Yeah and why is that?" Steve said; interested to hear what the man has to say.

The co-pilot was smug now, knowing something that he believed would shock Steve to hear "Your insane if you think you can out run the BSAA….we'll hunt you down to the ends of the earth. Chris Redfield already killed your boss's and your organization is doomed now."

Steve was sad to hear that Wesker and Excella were dead, but only a little. There was barely an expression on his face before he spoke and reached for his tactical knife "Yeah; I may not be able to run forever, but my day to die ain't today."

Then he pulls out his knife and buries it in the man's chest, killing him in a matter of seconds.

Once that was done, Steve continued to fly the helicopter for another hour before he saw planes fly by him and a loud explosion was heard. He did not bother to look back; Steve never was one for holding onto the past.

He remained silent for a moment, contemplating how many names would be put on the epitaphs for those who were killed back there. Would there only be one's for the BSAA soldiers and citizens who died in the outbreak, or would the names of his friends be on there as well, he doubted it. He imagined the only epitaphs they got were a list of names the BSAA keeps for the "bad guys" they killed.

He did not want to try again, Steve was ready to give up on trying, but for one last try he presses on his ear piece; still clinging to the hope that one of his friends responding to his call might happen. "This is Steve Burnside of the Hive/Host Capture Force, can anyone hear me?"

For another second Steve did not hear a response, his eyes shut down in anguish; believing that now he truly had no one, nothing left in his life to give a damn about. Then suddenly static could be heard before it started to clear up and he hears a voice "Hello, Steve is that you? It's Caleb."

To hear the voice of Caleb Wilson, the point man of HCF, was truly a reason for Steve to feel alive, to yell at the top of his lungs with joy and to be thanking god and everything else. Steve then heard him repeat his words again and this time he responds "Caleb, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice again."

"Same here man, I've been trying to get a hold of someone for answers and no one would pick up." Caleb said on his end, just as glad to hear Steve's voice as Steve was to hear his. "Where are you now Steve? I'm still trying to get out of this abandoned Umbrella town that Wesker sent me to, and I cannot for the life of me find a way to get out."

"I'm still in West Africa, but away from the Kijuju zone." Steve was toying with the controls of the helicopter, trying to find some setting that would give him directions "I'll come and get you just tell me where you're at."

"There's no real name for it, Wesker just calls it Far Point. It's a place in the middle of Colorado near west of the capital." Caleb could be heard saying on his end as Steve was still looking for a navigator.

Then Caleb says "Look Steve, I have to get moving now. The BSAA sent some cronies here. Just get here as soon as you can." Before Steve finished looking for the navigator and said "I'm coming Caleb, just hang in there. I'll be there soon."

With those final words Steve ceased communication and set course for the nearest BSAA fueling station, and then Colorado.


	2. Zero Files

**Zero Files**

**[From the Personal Files of Albert Wesker and Excella Gionne]**

**[Audio & Record Logs]**

**Lazarus Director's Log 1-[Kara Lawson]:** **January 1st, 1999.**

Test subject has been recovered and arrived, but the damage is far worse than initially anticipated.

In addition to a hole through the torso and internal injuries sustained from impalement, subject has also sustained exposure to cold temperature that could affect the brain. Despite the extent of the physical trauma suffered, Jenkins assures me that subject zero remains salvageable.

Thankfully the regeneration of the Veronica virus has replicated enough cells and missing body mass for us to work with.

The Lazarus project will proceed as planned. Only delayed by a few hours.

**Lazarus Director's Log 2-[Kara Lawson]: January 19th, 1999.**

We've nearly completed physical reconstruction of the subject's remains, thanks in part to the T-veronica virus' interference of decay by preserving its host, but we still need an approximate estimation on the the mental and neurological functions before proceeding.

Trent and Wesker have made our orders crystal clear: revive Steve Burnside to the man, or slightly man, as the case may be, he was before his death—the same mind and principles. The personality would be considered a bonus but not necessary.

If we alter his identity in any way that the characteristics to help him survive the outbreak on Rockfort Island could be lost, the Lazarus project will have been a failure. I refuse to allow our outcome to meet such a scenario.

**Lazarus Log Update 1-[Jenkins]: March 2nd, 1999.**

Even with exceptional progress, Kara still manages to remain an anomaly to me.

From the perspective as the project's director, she should be all giddy and ecstatic, jumping for joy at all that's been accomplished. But instead she's the same ice queen as ever.

Maybe she's worried Burnside could be another of Wesker's disciples and new favorite. Or she's just a plain, bold-faced, cold hearted bitch...hard to say anymore.

**Lazarus Log Update 2-[Kara Lawson]: June 7th, 1999.**

Progress has been slow...yet subject shows signs of recovery. Slowly. Vital Organs are once again functional, and there have been signs of rudimentary neurological activity.

In an effort to accelerate subject's recovery, I've authorized experimentation with the healing factor of the Veronica virus and the possibility of using the Wesker virus. Hopeful this could attribute to a more speedy recovery at a more desirable pace. Initial results are proving to be promising.

**Lazarus Log Update 3-[Jenkins]: September 15th, 1999.**

The cost of this fiasco is astronomical—over four billion dollars so far, by my last estimate. All just to bring some stiff back from the dead without the craving for human flesh. But nobody seems to care that we've gone over budget.

I don't know where the boss or Trent gets the money for this clusterfuck...maybe it's better not to. Wish he'd throw a bit of it my way, just a little.

**Lazarus Final Log-[Kara Lawson]: February 3rd, 2000.**

It's taken us an agonizingly long substantial time, with some set back in the recovering skin tissue, but the Lazarus projects is at its final phase. We've stabilized subject's heart rate and maintained life-support, all we have to do is wait for him to regain consciousness. The rest of the program is already being re-purposed and prepared to ship off all non-essential personnel and resources of the Lazarus cell to Arkham.

Once Raven completes his review of the subject's vital signs and gives a full health report, and green lights the clearance, Burnside will be presented to Doctor Reid for a psychological evaluation and cognition test.

It would be too premature to guess, right now. Yet, I feel compelled to state that the obvious fact that Lazarus has nearly succeeded. Though I've taken great pains to keep this thought to myself, as this uncharacteristic attitude would be seen, as if, I've suffered a mental breakdown. To any of my colleagues.

For now, we keep Burnside under sedation when he's not in cryo-stasis—bringing him out of stasis for the occasional checkup. The matter of this duration depends on when he's fully awake. I would estimate this to be soon. He has already shown awareness to his surroundings and reacting to outside stimuli once or twice in stasis.

All we can do is wait.

**Awakening: March 15th, 2000.**

[Albert Wesker and Kara Lawson appear in the video. Both standing near a cryostasis chamber.]

WESKER: "He looks healthy enough, to me, Kara. Open in it."

KARA: "Yes, sir. Just stand clear. We still don't know how he'll react to his surroundings." [Kara then slides her key card in the slot.]

[A barely recognizable Steve falls out of the chamber with leagues of water.]

STEVE: [coughing and gagging for air in shock] "Where...Where am I...Where is she?"

[Albert Wesker leans over, bending down on one knee.]

WESKER: "She?" [Realizing what his new prisoner meant] "She does not matter now. I do."

[Steve struggles to move before finally breathing normal again. Wesker then looks towards his men.]

WESKER: "Take him away!"

[Two H.C.F. members pick Steve up by the arms and carry him out.]

STEVE: "What's going on!? Where am I!?"

**Psychological Assessment Log-[Dr. Reid]: March 21st, 2000.**

Against my better judgement, I have compiled my evaluation of Steve Burnside, or Subject Zero, to determine his mental condition. Reluctantly, per the behest of Wesker, to deduce any weaknesses.

On the surface Steve behaves with the mannerisms of the average American teenager. Wearing the facade of a calm but unsure disposition, when dealing with strangers. Underneath this extremity lies a damaged mind...or what could be considered, by some, a "tortured soul." Dying only to be taken back from the clutches of death has taken its toll on the patient's mind. He exhibits what could very well be PTSD; is anxious whenever questioned on the details of his memory before death.

The poor kid's family is apparently all dead. His Mother killed by a Umbrella hitman, and the Father (Mr. Burnside), a leak in the company, became infected with the T-virus and was put down by his son like a rabid dog—to protect a friend. And has no siblings, or any other immediate family to come looking for him. All of these have left deep psychological scars. As such, it could also provide us a vulnerability we can exploit to bring him to our side. A few pokes at his developing abandonment issues and some offer of camaraderie or kinship and he could be pushed into becoming one of us. He also reacted to the name Claire with hope and shock. The extent of the intimacy he had with this woman I was unable to determine; he refused to divulge any information when questioned on the matter. Any friends or associates would be unlikely on account of his mistrust of anyone, but is not an impossibility.

He is indifferent to violence. No matter the amount of vile, bloody, or precarious standards of the horrible conditions he has escaped from, Steve remained emotionless; unaffected. This is...interesting.

Aside from a mild sense of juvenile humor, Steve is like a blank slate. Thanks to Lazarus, his personality and sense of morals can be molded by himself and whoever takes the initiative to lead him. I say this more out of caution than for opportunity.

**First Interview of Subject Zero: March 15th, 2000**

[A broken shell of Steve appears on a recorded video. Still visibly wet, he is being seated to a metallic table with a towel around him.]

DR. REID: "Good evening, Subject Zero."

SUBJECT ZERO: "..."

DR. REID: "Don't feel like talking, still? You're not leaving until you've provided me with a measure of information we need. Even though I would like to."

SUBJECT ZERO: "Wh-What do you want to know?"

DR. REID: "Your name, for starters."

STEVE: "Steve. My name is Steve Burnside."

DR. REID: "Okay, Steve, what happened to you?"

STEVE: "I was a prisoner of people like you...on Rockfort Island. For maybe one or two years, possibly more...after some time passed it felt like an eternity passed as days went by. Then one night something terrible happened: The door to my cell opened and I found the island overrun with monsters. An-And I know how that sounds, but a couple of days ago I was a corpse. So that in comparison is miniature on the freak scale."

DR. REID: "How did you come to being infected with the Veronica virus?"

STEVE: "Claire and I—Oh God, what happened to Claire?"

DR. REID: "Who's Claire?"

STEVE: "WHERE IS CLAIRE!"

DR. REID: "Steve, calm down."

STEVE: "WWWHERE IS SSSHHHEEE?!"

[End of Video.]

**Various Sections of Albert Wesker's Journal Pertaining to Steve Burnside: No specific month or day, beginning in 2002 and onward.**

Work with Steve has taken a spectacular turn. With Jack Krauser joining my ever-growing network, I have begun using a method suggested by my newest recruit: reprogram Steve.

This will be no simple task, as the last two years have taught me well. Pathetically, He still lives under the delusion that Chris and his little sister will come to his rescue. We shall shatter his allusions. Break down his identity, toy with his own guilt and self betrayals, and ultimately mold him into my new best man. Just like Chris was, in another lifetime. And he will become my ace in the hole, for when Claire Redfield complicates matters again.

Ever since my victory over RED QUEEN and the fall of Umbrella, one universal principle has always proven key to my survival and our success: only through more power will we thrive. Steve Burnside will become my Agent, my Agent Zero.

His exposure to the source of my own power has left Steve requiring a daily dosage of PG67A/W, as I, myself, do. Though he require a more stronger quantity of dosage because of the Veronica virus.

Its affects on him differ from how it treats me. His youth leaves him exposed to raging hormones and the serum enhances this. If it had not been for the isolation of his room, which has been treated more like a cell, and his own self-control, some of the women in our facility could have spent some nights bow-legged.

Fortunately, the viruses in his system make it almost impossible to conceive children. Just barely.

I do not know whether to call it fortune, providence, or just luck that Ada has remained under my employ at this junction—I, still, doubt this is of her own accord. But have allowed her stay for her continued usefulness. Her contribution to manipulating Steve is undeniable. With Steve's inability to differ between romantic feelings and lust, amplified by the effects of the daily dosage, it was easy enough for Ada to seduce him; under the guise of a less than innocent to transpire between him and her during one of their many training sessions. On my orders.

These will help to make him mine, and like Archangel, one of the best operatives we have ever seen.

**Escape Attempt 22**

[the suppressed gunfire of full-auto CZ 75 erupts down the hallway in echos]

CALEB: "Stop running, kid, and this'll all be over."

STEVE: "Why? Just so you have to put less effort into shooting me between the eyes."

CALEB: "If this was about just 'shooting' you, I would be aiming for your head not your legs. If a bullet could kill you."

[a bullet hits a mark in Steve's lower calf and another tears through his legs, exiting above his knee]

STEVE: "If you're going to take me back to that Cell then you might as well try to kill me, 'cause I'll just escape again and again until I'm out of this metal dungeon."

CALEB: "No you won't: you have nowhere to go to."

STEVE: "That's not-"

CALEB: "Oh but it is. You think I can't understand you, that none of us do. Believing you have something out there in the world we don't when in truth we're all you have now."

STEVE: "Oh yeah, 'cause turning into a monster is such a great opportunity to look forward to."

CALEB: "No. Not a monster, Steve; it's evolution. Then you'll see, being on this side of the line isn't as bad as people like the Redfields make it sound."

STEVE: "Why should I believe you, or Wesker, for that matter?"

CALEB: "This maybe come as a surprise to you, Burnside, but not all evils and monsters are born: they're made. Wesker and I are no exception to that rule; just as you are."

[End of recording]

**Burnside's Brainwash—Interval 1.**

WESKER: "How do you feel, Steve?"

STEVE: [coldly sarcastic] "Aside from the pain from the shots you force me to take everyday, and feeling like I want to screw the first woman I see? Great, just Great."

Wesker: "Ah youth, so much passion."

Steve: "So did you come here for a reason, or just to annoy me?"

Wesker: "Being returned from the icy grip of death is never cheap—And you owe that debt to me, Steve."

STEVE: "I didn't want this. I don't want to be here, I want to leave."

WESKER: "Too late, friend. You're beyond turning back to your old life. The Veronica-virus in your body and veins guarantees that you'll never be the man you were before."

STEVE: "It doesn't matter what you say. My friends will come for me. Claire—she can find me. Chris, too."

WESKER: "Your faith in them is almost adorable. And a little sad, Steve. The cavalry isn't coming to the rescue."

STEVE: "You're lying!"

WESKER: "No, I'm not. You are like me: a monster in the eyes of the world. To them, you're just a corpse not worth burying. Forgotten, abandoned."

STEVE: "No, no, no...no...no..."

WESKER: [intimidating] "Your life in meaningless, worthless, no merit."

**Burnside's Brainwash—Interval 2.**

STEVE: "Claire would not abandon me!"

WESKER: [cynically] "Wouldn't she?"

STEVE:[dead silence]

WESKER:"You are a patricide, after all. In some circles, people would consider you worse than me."

STEVE: "I didn't have a choice."

WESKER: "Of course you did, and you chose to kill your own father."

STEVE: [more dead silence]

WESKER: "Everyone is in this life for themselves. You can either live with it, or continue being used and pathetic: your choice."

**Burnside's Brainwash—Interval 3.**

WESKER: "Back here again, I see."

STEVE:[mute]

WESKER: "Come now Steve, I miss our special little chats."

STEVE: [panting] "...What do you want, Wesker?"

WESKER: "Not much...just for the world to bow down to my whim. Though I'd gladly settle for you agreeing to work for me."

STEVE: "Why would I do that? I have nothing left to lose. Or gain."

WESKER: "I think you'll find that it's only after you've lost everything that you're free of all life's burdens and have everything to gain. Why languish in here when you know I won't let you out, otherwise?"

STEVE: "You have nothing to offer me."

WESKER: "I can give your life purpose, and meaning to this hell you've been left in."

STEVE: "I'd rather waste away as another prisoner, again."

WESKER: "Do you really want to spend your new life confined here, of all places?"

STEVE: "Why won't you just kill me?"

WESKER: "Now, where would the fun in that be?"

**Burnside's Brainwash—Interval 4.**

STEVE: "Redfield...? Is that you?"

WESKER: "Redfield? Chris or Claire? Or did you grow delusions since we last spoke and think this is the hobble in Arkansas?"

STEVE: "Christ..."

WESKER: "Neither of them are going to save you."

STEVE: "They'll come. They will!"

WESKER: "It's been two years-and-a-half now, Steven. I do believe it's time to face the facts, don't you?"

STEVE: "Screw you!"

WESKER: "That's the spirit, Steve. You know. you can be a chip off the ol' Redfield block. Hold onto that anger and rage, reserve it for the ones who deserve it."

STEVE: "You. You deserve it!"

WESKER: "Me? Let's not forget who's here, Steve: me. Claire isn't coming for you. In fact: she hasn't even bothered to search for you since Antarctica. You're ours now. My latest partner in crime; who knows, we might make a regular dynamic duo."

STEVE: "You're lying!"

WESKER: "Well, I admit I've lied in the past to others; but I'm not now. I find it a poor start to a professional relationship with a employee."

STEVE: "Claire would never abandon me."

WESKER: "Really?" [Wesker holds out a photo for Steve to glean] "So this isn't her talking with _another_ boy? Weird. The ponytail is typically an obvious giveaway."

STEVE: "No!...no!...no!...no...!"

WESKER: "Believe me, I didn't want to show you that photo. I really didn't. But it seemed the simplest way to help you find closure. I know it stings a little, from personal experience of being scorned by someone you loved. But sometimes you gotta mix up being cruel and kind."

[Wesker then punches Steve across the face]

WESKER: "I'll leave you to think on it. Maybe bring a playmate by next time. Sleep tight, don't let the chain bugs bite. "

[Wesker leaves and the door closes.]

STEVE: "No...she wouldn't, would she...no...no." [sobbing can be hard.] "It's not true...it can't…"

**Burnside Brainwash—Interval 5.**

[Steve takes a punch square to the face, suspending from chain restraints on his wrists]

WESKER: "Ready to see the truth yet, Steve?"

STEVE: "Screw you, dingus."

KRAUSER: "That has to be a new record. They usually give after the 50th."

WESKER: "Again!"

[Krauser punches Steve again, first in the ribs then in the face]

STEVE: "Screw you, too, Rambo!"

KRAUSER: "Rambo...? Really?"

WESKER: "I believe that's the one with a Vietnam Veteran going insane from PTSD."

KRAUSER: "I know what it means, Sir. Respectfully. It just pissed me off that he said it."

[Steve suffers another punch from Krauser]

STEVE: "I'm going to kill the both of you when I get drown from here."

WESKER: "Do you see what I have to put up with here, Krauser? He still thinks I'm the villain of this tragedy."

KRAUSER: "I know, and we're trying so hard to help him."

STEVE: "How is beating me into a pulp, letting me heal, then beating me up again, going to help me?"

KRAUSER: "This makes you stronger. In time you'll grow to push past it."

WESKER: "We care enough to strike you. It's Claire who is the bad guy here...or woman, I suppose. She's thrown you away like a unwanted puppy, so now we're going to make you stronger and then you get to show her the loss she took."

[Krauser punches Steve again]

WESKER: "So when you start feel like the lesson's finally sunken in let us know. We can move on to the next. Then the fun begins."

**Audio Surveillance of Zero and Wesker**

**Subject: Agent Zero**

**Topic: The Murder of Senator Ron Davis.**

**Location: Harvardville**

**Date: 2005**

Senator Davis: "Who...what is the meaning of this…?"

[the sound of a struggle is heard]

Senator Davis: "Get away from me!"

STEVE: "Senator Ron Davis is dead. I repeat: Senator Ron Davis is Dead."

Wesker: Very good, Zero. Now send all copies of data to Vester and Sherawat then feel free to delete everything."


	3. Arkham

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storming the mountains of madness.

**Arkham Part 1: Storming A Mountain of Terror**

**Six Months after Albert Wesker's Death.**

**2009**

Bumping up and down in his seat, Steve found fighting the discomfort of the environmental debris the least pressing matter to cause him strain.

The advent of their expedition could only be described as the byproduct of pure desperation mixed with poor common sense of standards, in Steve's opinion, brought on by the H.C.F.'s circumstances in the recent months of fowl luck to follow Wesker's death with resources and supplies ever-shrinking. Ascending, or, perhaps, descending, even further into these mountains of madness; where a base of metal had been hidden among the ice caps.

Somewhere deep within Antarctic, where Lawson, a previously eminent authority for Wesker on the T-Veronica virus, and director to the Lazarus project—of which there was a sole "volunteer" submitted to the most abominable, unpleasant, experimentation and endured its insufferable agonies—had been last heard to have been re-stationed before Chris and Sheva drove their respective RPG's through her employer's head.

And so in coming to the cold region, where the outpost named Arkham resided, Steve found himself conflicted by the choice to not only come here with so few of their ever-shrinking numbers, but, also with these new mercenaries they had recruited and brought into their ranks.

Keeping his eyes on the suppressed barrel of his assault rifle was all Steve had to distract himself from the other passengers in his portion of the convoy driving through the harsh blizzard that made the mission even more hazardous.

Any positive disposition towards this mission soured into null-and-void as far as Steve was concerned when Archangel came from the front of their Armored personnel carrier.

Caleb Wilson—Known in reverence as Archangel by his men, fellow operatives, and now-dead superiors; and in anti-reverence by their shared enemies—slightly contrasted in appearance from Steve's fellows. Still wearings the predominate black garbs of his old soldier life: a military Operational Duty Uniform (ODU) that was shaded either a dark grey or light black, under a black striker vest and cowl, as well as black gloves and boots.

"Just a few more clicks, Steve, and we'll be near the mark." he said, almost glad for their small quality of time used up in these small quarters to reach an end. Carrying two one-edged short swords on his back, resembling ninjatoes (otherwise known as secret agent ninja swords), two pistols on his side, and suppressed, full-auto CZ-75's.

"Then we're one step closer to bein' done with this. Thank God!" He made no secret of his resentment to being forced to come along, even more so, towards those they were having to work alongside.

"Don't be like that…" Archangel wanted to argue, but debating felt pointless. The American Taskforce to contact them with the offer of help in exchange for the intel to this location were friends of a friend of someone Steve held a grudge against. Leon S. Kennedy to be more precise. He led the taskforce, on and off the field. For as long as Steve could recall, likely stemming from the possible lies Wesker told him during his indoctrination into the Hive/Host Capture Force, he hated Leon vehemently.

Claire, the one to watch his death, a woman he loved, had apparently started using his 'company' for comfort. Steve hated her for that, but slightly less than Kennedy. A factual source of hurt and abandonment; so once it boiled out of control and she moved in to seduce him, on Wesker's order, he was only to happy with the deed. Though in hindsight the action's ripple aftereffect only made Steve's training more difficult, Ada was more interested in teaching Steve how to seduce a asset and properly use close quarters combat than saddling him and jumping his bone. Was there even a method to properly train some intimate with his person?

His friend's response made Caleb's face tense up in reaction. "Keep your emotions in check, Steve—Tolerate them until we find your ex and the facility data, and whatever's left inside. After that, what happens to Kennedy and his people is determinantal, at best."

So he expected him to play nice with the vagabonds? The same people who, under normal circumstances, would be eager to line each of them against a wall and put a bullet in the back of their skulls. Under the pretense that they were Bioterrorists, no less. The idea of it seemed comical to Steve's imagination. Caleb had been leading them for five grueling-long months, now—since Steve rescued him from that abortion of a mission gone awry in Far Point, Colorado; and Steve had no desire to lead—it took long enough, but he finally cracked.

"Do you need a reminder, Steve? We don't just need man power to secure Arkham, but the notes on how to make more PG67A/W serum. Or do you want this degeneration to continue?"

The reminisce evoked a disturbing feeling that caused Steve to shudder and his skin to crawl with goosebumps. "Quit reminding me of that." he compelled himself to say and put a hand over the black skull cap covering his hair.

SIX MONTHS, it had been six months since Albert Wesker's death; and in that amount of time Steve had gradually begun noticing a change in his own eyes and auburn hair. His eyes no longer maintained their green form which covered his Tyrant peepers most of the time, unless experiencing an intense feeling such as anger, and strands of pale blond hair were starting to dot the auburn of his head.

Steve had hoped that maybe some his old contacts in Russia or the United States would be able to help him get more of the serum. That hope was dashed when someone began cleaning house by killing all those associates. Kara was his last hope...that and the AI or computer database kept housed in Arkham.

Another passenger's garnered attention caused him to focus slowly on their conversation, hesitant to speak at first; sitting like the quiet mystery kid in school. "That's it? We play brothers-in-arms, and then when it's said and done they die?"

The question had caused Caleb and Steve to both stir their heads to the man. Steve had little idea whether he knew the right words for how to best explain, to justify murdering their temporary allies, when he wasn't sure he could. He had killed hundreds of people before this, and committed acts he considered worse, in the name of what was supposed to be for a new world. Infinite doubt plagued him each time he pulled the trigger, and each time he told himself the same justification to get on with it—not this time.

But Caleb felt no such contradiction. "Do you have a problem with it, Deadshot?"

"No...Just not sure if I was reading my options the right way. Your orders can be confusing sometimes." their marksman responded with his head turning back to the bullets he had been fitting into his extra magazines. Caleb made a point to at least clarify one detail for both him and Steve. "We kill them if they try to double-cross us. If they keep their end of the bargain, then we don't need to shed blood."

The moniker by which they refer to him, "Deadshot," was all Steve and Caleb knew about their sharpshooter. He had used so many names and alias over the years— like Keegan Lawton, Floyd Dorian, Jace Saxon, Jace Miles, etc.—that it became impossible to know which was really his, and stuck to using code name since it was all they had to call him by.

Deadshot showed no relief at this elaboration, and Steve still knew that deep down he was. Unlike them, He was still a human; he could die a mortal death, unlike Steve and Caleb. He has sustained a wound, like any average person would. His right eye was an obvious clue—it was because of that he now wore a glowing red, cybernetic eye-piece that allows him to still function in the field.

Watching him fasten his wrist turrets, they soon felt their ride come to a complete halt in the snow. It made Steve pause and remember to check his own gear. First the assault rifle and then the two Samurai Edges that he normally kept holstered under his armpits. Unlike like Caleb, sitting across from him. Who only held out his solid, almost rubber-like, black and yellow fabric balaclava mask for Steve to see.

"Remember, once these doors open, you are Steve no more. He's dead, after all. Only respond to Zero." Caleb made a point to remind his friend cautiously, as he slid the mask over his face. Despite his tough act, Caleb had the best interests of his people at heart; and didn't want to lose anymore. They call him Archangel for a reason. Still, It was a notice Steve could have gone without. As he fit the ear-piece, that acted like a means of communication for their operatives, inside his earlobe, Steve had already put on the face of his Agent Zero persona. It was a simple trick that took him months of perfection.

Ready for whatever strange, terrible surprises today had in-store for him, Steve went on to gladly meet them. Yet, Stepping off with a bitter expression of coldness that could almost rival the frosty temperature they all, now, endured.

The soldier's of Kennedy's Taskforce (better known, otherwise, as Checkmate) were heavily coated for these maddening conditions. Hefting around assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, explosives and other weapons of unpleasant deaths that no human should want to willingly suffer at the hands of.

Despite his own protestations and personal bias towards the militarized group, Steve could silently note how impressive their operation truly was. Leon must have thought to bring everything they had for any contingency back-up. It almost made working with Checkmate bearable. But those were the breaks. Leon was easily spotted among the cacophony of operatives and talking. On the fringes of the soldier host, Steve kept a cautious distance from the blond-headed agent. As he and Caleb were beginning to converse. He doubted Leon could recognize him by face, alone, though Claire would have, most likely, mentioned a few facts about him.

Marching to his own steps gave Steve the time he needed for his bearings. Spotting a few familiar faces in the crowd. Not making eye-contact with anyone there. Six months ago, he killed several of the B.S.A.A.'s people in his reckless escape; slaughter so many that he lost count. So meeting some among this circus who have met him in the past would be bad for business.

After pretending to be nobody in-particular for 10 seconds that dragged on into feeling like what could only be hours, and pacing around, near the personnel carriers, Steve is gestured to come up front at the post where Caleb stood by Leon. He didn't want to go, or be near Kennedy, but he promised to do whatever was necessary. So he would, even if it gnawed and bent him.

"Zero, this is Leon S. Kennedy, Taskforce leader. Kennedy, this is Zero." Introductions were bluntly straight-forward, short and sweet; but enough for Steve to get some figure on Leon: dressed more lighter than the rest of his company with a Silver Ghost on his hip-side. He acted amused by Steve's name, nearly chuckling out a snicker.

"What kind of name is Zero?"

Zero—it's my name, and still fits after all this time. Steve mentally laughed as he laments on how fitting his moniker suits him. His life value spelled out for him in bold print, with no change since his days as a corpse. He hated it and was accustomed to it. Just like he hated Leon, but unlike his moniker, Steve had no reason to tolerate him. "It's my name. Got a problem with it? If so, Go screw yourself!"

Just because Caleb is his leader by choice, and expects him to play nice with others, does not mean Steve should be going out of his way to becoming best friends with Kennedy. Yet he recognized, in a sporadic way, he had gone too far. "You know what? I'm sorry, that was totally out of line. Let me rephrase it. That's my name. Feel free to deal with the confusion at your own pace and on your own time, of course."

Leon became flabbergasted and Caleb's cheeks burned with rage at the initial rude choice of words. When he rephrased it and apologized Leon seemed not to care either way, and Caleb was back to plain indifference. Seeing that it made no difference to him either way, Steve took the initiative to ask "Did you need something? If not, I'll resume my isolation; gladly."

Caleb soon began giving directives to him and Deadshot with equal focus before Leon could make a fuss or make a counter-remark. "Zero, you will lead on with the infantry grunts to secure the entrance. We'll be taking the hanger then join up with you after we're done cleaning up the inside room by room. Deadshot: you're on little bird duty."

Steve looked at them. The unruly pack of masculine grunts Caleb wished him to march on with were almost a mockery to soldiers everywhere, at first glance. Glorified testosterone. They were humans after all, so Steve put some slack on his criticism and knew not to act too disappointed by how degrading Leon's men were at being imposing.

Looking back at the two operative, without any intention of making a face that betrayed his opinion, he asked "Which one of these Merry Men would be the leader?" not certain where he stood among them. And hesitant to guess which in the pecking order he needed to stay on good terms with. The gloved index finger of Leon soon pointed to one in particular up-front. An individual that Steve partially recognized.

"Huntsman is the closest thing they have to a leader. You're free to act of your own accord—despite the obvious need for an attitude adjustment."

Taking his leave from the trio, right on cue, Steve met up with the scouting party as they prepared to depart.

For all his dour bravado and impetuous yearning to have the serum, he could not help the level of intrigue he had for Huntsman's face.

It was not like Steve found him attractive or sensually appealing. The past few liaisons he had had taught him a thing or two. Enough for Steve to know he preferred women. No, this "Huntsmen" and Steve had met before today; a long, long time ago. So long it felt like another lifetime.

He trekked ahead of the cavalcade, reaching the front within seconds. Pushing himself to move harder and faster so he could get a closer look. Accumulating a thin layer of snow to his mug as the icy pieces of white clung to his auburn stubbles.

When Steve stalked his way up enough to see a side of the face more clearly, he lost his words as he struggled to introduce himself. "Huntsman?" he finally managed to jerk free a word amidst his hesitation.

After he did, the young man registered to the word as he received it. While still half-focused on marching through the cold. When he turned to face Steve's direction he was pale and around Burnside's age; maybe a year or two older.

Giving no judgments in his gaze nor expressing distrust when he looked at him. Unlike the rest of his company, who disapproved of his presence immediately after noticing the glow of his cat-like eyes.

"It's Snow, actually. Damien Snow." the stranger introduced himself. Giving no negative regard for the physical qualities of Steve's Tyrant traits.

The cohesion of facts came together once the name was uttered aloud. Confirming this was whom Steve believed him to be: His old friend. It was a miracle he survived Rockfort, and more, to the point that he lived to become an operative.

Steve replied to the stunning introduction, reluctantly, "Zero." Wanting now even more than ever to not have anyone here learn about his true identity.

He and Damien had not spoken to or seen one another in a decade, since that God awful night—that Hellish nightmare made flesh and bone. Now, the two friends were scruffy older versions of the men they once were; and only one could recognize the other by sight and name alone.

The end of his travel was welcomed by Steve with enthusiasm. Reaching the edge of a tiny casym with a wall of ice and snow on the other side and Damien explained "Start climbing." before he helped his men prepare themselves for the enormous climb.

Having brought climbing spikes of his own, Steve was the first to jump on the mountain-side. Digging them deep on the solid surface; as deep as they could be lodge inside.

Climbing up rapidly, listening to his surroundings with his very acute hearing. It unnerved Steve hearing nothing; absolutely nothing. And that was all he need for him to know how right he was to be concerned. To people like Steve, made paranoid when nothing could be heard in a place that should be crawling with monsters, this could mean anything. He expected, at the very least, the scuttling of some miniature abomination remnants or animals native to the cold region where the humans were gradually freezing themselves to death.

Those humans were joining him in the climb. One by one. Digging their own climbing spikes to follow him up the mountain. Damien Snow being the first among them, and leading as the forefront of his people's ascent.

It became like something of a race between the two of them. A competition Steve had the edge in. Along with a head-start.

For Steve, this started out as just another job. His old friend tagging along was a bonus. For the other grunts, this could be their final mission. Destined to draw their last breath as a monster rips them into little bitty bite sized pieces.

The last time Steve entered here there had been an elevator to lead them up, with a long bridge extending over the chasm he had just jumped across. At the risk of enduring a long fall down, if he missed his mark, that would hurt. A lot. Now the only passage inside was through the mountaintop.

Impaling his spike down for the millionth time, they beheld the first glimmering sight of the metallic entrance. Find a grizzly on the mountaintop with the upper half body on and the lower scrabbling on the edge as he teetered in, pulling himself up.

Corpses littered on the blood stained surface of a solid layer above the icy snow before the door; which remained untouched. Judging by the gruesome manner of their deaths, Steve could picture this as the handiwork of himself, or even Caleb, or both.

One had their head liberated from their shoulders by decapitation. Another cut in half at the waist. Some missing limbs with bullet holes in their black uniforms. And others ripped to shreds or impaled by claws.

These men were no mere victims; no lambs for the slaughter—these mangled, ungainly remains were H.C.F., like Steve. Highly trained, experienced, disciplined soldiers and militarized killers who could hold off an advancing army for hours on their own. But what killed them could not have possibly been human. And if this was the work of what he was thinking, then where did it scuttle off to?

While thinking it through, and seeing Damien rising up with his fellows, Steve pressed on the earpiece; still eyeing the bodies closely and they way they had died. Or slaughtered, depending on how he words it.

"Yeah this is Burglar 1 to The Big Cheese. Operation Home Invasion has hit a snag. Do you copy?" Even if the situation was in serious, and possibly dire, circumstances did not mean he'd forego the opportunity for some humor to lighten the mood and rub it in command's face. "I repeat, your brilliant plan is already starting to give us grief."

"This is Archangel to Wiseass. Care to elaborate, blabbermouth?"

 _How to convey this properly?_ "Caleb, I'm literally at the front door—staring at it, actually—With a short distance between me and it. Guess what's filling up the gap: A squad of dead bodies and severed appendages!"

"Interesting. Call us back when you're inside, Zero. Forget about playing hero, everyone may already dead." What Archangel said upset Steve: advised by his leader to forsake the lives of their own people remaining inside.

The depths to which Steve's stomach dropped was…...disheartening. Leon's grunts he could stand to watch die—except for, maybe, Damien. But to see his people, his brothers-in-arms, massacred so violently that it filled Agent Zero with unutterable loathing. It made him want to do something about it. Someone needed to be held accountable, and pay for this; and it made him want to kill anything remotely capable of enacting such brutality.

Jarring himself back to the present, Steve heard Caleb asking "How does the entrance look?" A reasonable question. When checking the metallic surface Steve found that the mechanism used the research staff to gain access from the outside had been rendered inert by the same entity to to slaughter the soldiers. Riddling the machinery with claw marks.

"Gnawed beyond repair and recognition" Steve replied while still unhinged as he gleaned the scope of how insane the mission was getting. "I don't think the scarab will help out end. Is there anyone still inside who can open the door for us? Because we're basically hitting a snag."

"No!" Archangel replied, breaking through cacophony of the harsh blizzard storm and static; continuing with "None inside have responded to our broadcasts." before hanging up on his end. _Everyone may be dead._

Steve cross-examined the panel and Caleb choice of words. Looking to inside before the storm. Caleb and Steve had no secondary means of opening the door. In fact, Caleb may have _even_ needed to consider going back, as he would normally, if not for the circumstances surrounding their current matter being a time issue. But Damien insisted his people could manage so Archangel ordered Zero to wait while they tried.

Watching as Checkmate's technicians connect various lengths of wires to several hacking devices with the scarab, one of Wesker's best means of hacking a system, Steve readied his M4A1 before he gave his dead soldiers a second review for anything. Something could still be scuttling in the ice and snow. The same something to kill the sentries rotting the cold.

"Did you know them...?" Damien asked. Joining at Steve's side while his men continued working. "You've been staring at them like _that_ for a while now; making that disturbed face. You seem more concerned with them than whether we've picked the door's lock."

"Did you?"

Damien responded by replying "No—Not yet." The veteran agent did not shy away from the myriad of technical complications in their way; nor deny that they had a possibility of failure. _An honest pessimist to the last,_ had been Steve's clinging memory of him; a memory Damien continue to live up to with twice the vigor. Steve could almost appreciate the tenacity if the day was not starting so surly. "Than the answer's no—I didn't know these dead men here, I think. For all I know, I could've met them but my minds drawing a blank."

They felt the cold temperatures around them rise and fall with the tremor of their hands becoming worse and then less trying as their team stood in continued exposure. Global-warming had melted much of the region's caps of ice since the end of Steve's internment here to make it nearly unrecognisable to the eyes of someone who had seen it a decade ago. Only the cold breeze of wind remained the same; with the inclusion of a ghastly echo of sibilant hisses now in distant proximity. Steve knew of the many native animals but none made quite a unnerving sound.

Damien looks to him and asks "You heard that right?" Bringing his own weapon at the ready before Steve answered "Not good."

The sound of Lickers were unmistakable to the ears of a veteran in bioterrorism, and they multiplied around the team's position. Damien barked orders for his grunts to either focus on the door or ready their weapons. When the cacophony of gunshots ensued Steve fired his first grenade to kill some of the external brain-exspoing freaks and used the second to destroy part of the ice and sent most of the B.O.W.'s on one side falling to their death. Lickers took some of the scouting team before the double metal finally opened.

"It's open. Get inside, Snow! Now! Your people _need_ to get inside!" Steve barked. He provided cover with the teams rear-guard as he ran for the door; firing off his rifle until his magazines were out of stock and readied his Samurai Edges after getting inside. A small portion of the already meager group remained outside the door by then. Struggling to fight to the entrance by the time Steve realized they would not make it. Then the door shut, and all Steve could hear was the screams of men dying in slow agony.

**Arkham Part 2: The Uninvited Guests**

Steve made almost no movements once Arkham's doors slammed shut with a loud pound and several tumblers in the door were heard locking down. Listening as Damien's men still outside continued to pitch guttural death moans and other sounds no man should make as the Lickers finished off the last of their remaining prey.

Putting away his pistols, Steve wore no discernible emotion on his face as he listened to the cries of agony die out one by one in the Checkmate operatives. Damien and his men, luck enough to make it inside, could not see it at the time but the H.C.F. operative felt melancholy overcome his being second after second.

The Huntsmen gripped Steve by the collar of his shirt and jacket in hand fillers. "What the Hell is wrong with you, Zero?" Pissed at his temporary associate, Snow slammed Steve against the metallic wall with enough force to cause an imprint to form where Steve's back collided to form the impression.

Bumping the back of his head and having his vision go blurry for nearly ten seconds from the excessive speed, Steve freed himself after swatting the grip with both his hands before answering "Those men were already dead. The lickers were ontop of them and would've killed each of them before they could get 10 feet near the door; once they finished with them they'd come for us."

Damien wanted to throttle Steve, his men wanted to shoot him. To Damien he showed a small sample of remorse he was still able to convey into expression as much as he could muster, but to his grunts Steve dared them to "Take your best shot." Cause when they failed to kill Steve—and they would—they would be dealing with something worse than the Lickers or Wesker.

"Maybe. Still worth the risk!" one grunt barked as his buddies mumbled in both agreement and conflicting viewpoints on the reason behind Steve's actions.

Damien at the very least knew that to some extent, like something out of DC, this Zero character could move faster than the speed of of a bullet freshly discharged by handguns and assault rifles. So firing off these weapons they had on them seemed redundant from his and Steve's perspective since he could dodge them, and the few to find their mark would only leave small wounds that would heals themselves in a few seconds.

"Not that it matters, anyway." another one of the Checkmates lamented out-loud while examining the control panel as he held a short shotgun lowered towards the ground. "The door's not going to open again. So even though y'all want to, they're all dead and the only thing standing between us, them, and the thing to slash through them is jammed shut."

Pressing his fingers on several buttons as he did so, the SGT. operative his friends called Boone, said. "And I hate to admit it, but Zero's right. They were all dead regardless of what we did." Boone was not alone in his opinion, with the outrage over the matter still large. But Steve did not care. Screw this, he thought to himself while he continued on down the hall. Telling them "Wait here and stay pissed or continue with the mission. Either way works for me."

Somewhere near the southern wing of the Arkham facility was where they found themselves, to the best recollection of Steve's vivid memory from his time in the base during the Lazarus project. Where the medical wing resides, alongside the housing complexes and cafeteria. All of which were several sections away from the hanger—where Caleb was probably landing his team along with Kennedy's. When Steve split from the group Damien ordered his people to survey room after room to search for supplies. All the same, Steve was happy to be away from them.

Every section of the sector's wing had become like a ghost town. Only two sound remained: the dying air conditioning and a repetition of a announcement echoing again and again through the speakers 'attention, Arkham has suffered an unauthorized access and under code black level one lockdown. Avoid contact with unauthorized personnel.'

At hearing the first mention of the level 1 "code black" Steve pressed his ear piece without a moment of hesitation only to hear static call back at him. "Well…shit, I'm royally boned now." Both the announced status of Arkham (the former) and the (latter) static being a bad sign. Regardless of the level, code black of Wesker's protocol is always bad for everyone involved when it arises; and the static was not a part of his predicament Steve wanted to have compiled along with the problems he was already facing.

Realizing there was nothing he could do, Steve soon took up his own search of the barracks where he found the one labeled bunk of interest to him: Zero. No actual barrack existed in Arkham, of course; more like a small room that some individuals temporarily stationed at the facility would use for their private quarters. His old room, the zero room, filled Steve with burning reminiscence as he paced around the small room.

Welcome home Burnside, Steve could picture Cara saying if she had been around as he requainted himself with the hovel that had once been his home a decade earlier. Saying with his first two steps into his room "I'm home...I'm Home." Breathing in the familiar atmosphere with a warm sense of security and blissful joy overwhelming his usual disposition of gloom, doom, and dread.

When they brought him back from the dead to the land of the living, Steve had been forced to settle for the scraps of dregs and accommodations of abodes he could find when on assignments for Wesker. Staying from one temporary home to another as he drifted during the various jobs the H.C.F. would have him do. Arkham had been an exception, the exception, in the year to follow his resurrection in the Lazarus program. Resting and recuperating after Steve agreed to work for Wesker.

Everything about his old room, as a whole, was untouched, Steve could tell. All the other barracks had been repurposed for new inhabitants with signs of the previous occupant leaving in a rush. His room had been dusted continuously but never given a new inhabitant.

Reaching to pull off the empty M41 still clinging on his back pointing down, he found his old journal containing notes on his own private investigation into his movements before Umbrella caught him, and chronicles for events from past missions worth noting as well as his reflection on death. The bed still had the permanent impression of where he would always sit and the desk was still littered with the papers and shells of unused bullets.

He quickly tucked away the journal and made use of the abandoned bullets. Not that it surprised him much to find the lead plethora lying around the preserved room.

Soon after he retreated from the room, trying not to let the familiar sights take up much of his time and thoughts. Steve had already been fixating on how abandoned Arkham had been when they arrived. The bodies of slaughtered H.C.F. soldiers outside suggested the marks of an invasion or attack on the base. but only the B.S.A.A. and Checkmate had cause to attack and neither they nor the lickers could do this.

"Zero! Get over here!"

Snow called from a distance in a tone to convey an instant sense of urgency. Steve did not hesitate for a moment to answer the call for his presence after slinging his assault rifle once again on his back. Saying, as he arrived in a minute or two, "What, what? What is it, Damien?"

Meeting up with his group, Steve found Damien standing idly by a large metallic door as he said "See for yourself…" directing him with a finger point to where the giant door was holding up ajar with enough space to crawl through. Joking "I'll give you a hint: when is a door not a door?" while doing so.

Bending down into a crouched position Steve could see a hallway telling a different story of Arkham's recent history. The lights were dead past the door, with the light shining on their end illuminating a crimson liquid from several corpses slaughtered similarly to the men outside. A sight of horror Steve would have never expected to find in Arkham causing him to mutter "Jesus freakin' Christ...," as he returned to his feet.

"Yeah, I kinda figured that would be your reaction."

"Isn't there any other alternative way through?"

"No: all the others were blocked. Whatever hit your friend here hard, it managed to pry this door open when the others locked down." Damien continued to explain "This is our only way through." Starting to take notice of how Steve had nothing left on him but the empty M4A1, his two Samurai Edges and the small dual pair of knives to defend himself with (not counting his main tactical knife). Then says "And we're going in first." as he handed Steve a fresh magazine with a second taped onto the first.

Looking one last time at the carnage that had ensued in the darkened hallway, Steve agrees reluctantly and grabs the dual magazine by the lower half and then loads it into his M4A1's chamber before fitting on a silencer while Damien handpicks who would be going with them.

Ultimately leaving Sgt. Boone behind to keep the detachment in-line, since he was one of the few who didn't want to kill Steve, while he and Damien would be taking a redhead named Miller with them through the bloody hallway.

His weapon ready, Steve was the first to crouch under the ajar door before Damien came in with a silent weapon of his own, and then Miller—Angela Miller, Steve was almost certain he heard Snow call her in a more casual familiar tone than he did with Boone or the others under his command—with her suppressed MP5K-PDW ready with a angled grip attachment.

Moving through the halls of the derelict facility, Damien pressed on his radio "Overlord, this Eagle Two, reporting in. Status update on Eagle One." hoping for a status report only to hear static—just like Steve had earlier— and tried again. "Overlord, report!" No call back was ever received.

Steve had hoped these bodies left on the floor could tell him more than the one outside about the "intruder" to leave the numerous rotting carcuses before him. And just as before the handiwork seemed the product of a professional monster army—Some were stabbed; some were shot; some had their heads and limbs torn or bitten off; and they were all left with nothing obvious stolen from their individual person. So why kill them? Unless...they wanted specific members of the staff only. In which case made sense to Steve and why he was not finding a higher ranked Arkham employee.

Except for Jenkins. The first and only member of the staff Steve could actually recognize amongst the dead was Philip Jenkins—a key member of the research team handpick by Wesker, after Lawson, for Project Lazarus.

"Jenkins...J-Jesus, man..." There were no words to describe how appalling the sight was for him; to see his old acquaintance riddled with bullet holes and cut mark was bad enough, but Steve knew the suffering did not end there—he was tortured. The terror was still fresh in the scientist's face with evidence in the marks his attendants left behind. As someone whom learned from Wesker some of the best insight into the detail of victimization, Steve could recognize details that most people would have never thought to crossexamine.

Joining his side, Angela asks "I take it you and this guy knew one-another?" Taking notice of the obvious signs to his displeasure for what he was seeing.

"Yeah, that's one way to describe it." Answering her hesitantly while trying hard not to give away too much details "Jenkins, here, came to Arkham before me a couple years back after the construction was finished."

Damien was noticeably absent for sometimes, scouting ahead of them by a few meters to search. Steve took the opportunity to frisk Jenkins' body to see if there would be any remaining provisions or some useful trinket still on his person like a day planner...or research notes; but instead found only a tattered PDA. The next best thing Steve had to find.

It was the last real instant message on Jenkin's PDA to be long, sent a month after the B.S.A.A. killed Wesker, to be the most enlightening and the one to unsettle Steve's sense of security the most:

April 5th, 2009

Get to your quarters and lock the door, Jenkins, the A.I. is preparing to lock down the facility—meaning someone has breached Arkham.

We're under a siege with and there is a Red Queen in the mix.

Major Code Black.

End of message.

Then a continued repetition of the same message sent every day: still alive? When Steve tried to respond Cara failed to send her own texted response.

Listening to the every message and reading every text the operative could practically picture the Australian scientist standing before him once more. Should I even be surprised to care this intensely,still, he thought somewhat by the emotion. So many of his memories associated with Lawson and his time in Arkham even Steve knew to say they have history would be as big of an understatement as his complex relationships with Ada and Excella.

When he was trying to readjust to life, Steve was always locked into a cell so the chance for me to escape was the most improbable. The few times Wesker did permit to leave his confines with guards, Steve had enough instincts to recognize the momentary occasion: a medical examination. Always left to the omission of his own devices once inside, and keeping him from leaving until Cara Lawson arrived. The first time, when he still clung to some hope of escape, Steve never tried to escape when it was just her—she may have been a scientist but was one to frequently work in the field enough and was more closer to a operator then Steve had been at the time.

"Take off your shirt." he remembered being the first instruction she gave, after "sit on the table.

He never hesitated to question her choice of word, and she responded by annoying him into complying with some babble that escaped his recollection. Checking to see how well his scar—from the time Alexia had impaled him with the tentacle—was healing. Not great, but had ceased being a further issue.

The moment was a rather heated one for him. Steve could remember the way she was looking at him, the way he was probably looking at her. To a point if his time was not up Steve imagines how different the scenario would have been different. Though in the following two years they grew closer to the same direction when Archangel and Steve were ordered to transfer from Arkham to Wesker's new base. Something Burnside always resented.

In Spite of a prospect that Cara could still be alive, Steve felt the greatest sense of flabbergasted flabbergastation overcome him by the latest installation to the long figurative ledger of complications to be added to the mission. Not even a month had to go by for something like this to happen. Then there was the mention of a A.I. deep inside Arkham somewhere. And the notion of a functioning artificial intelligence was suppose to be a urban legend of science—that had always been Steve's consensus after leaving Arkham, when Ada would often ask him and others between their training sessions about the multiple rumors of Wesker having a research cell experimenting on the topic she was inquiring briefly about.

That intrigued him—Maybe even helped him gain some answers on his own; possibly to why he and Damien seem incapable of calling anyone through their radios and ear pieces.

Arkham was defended, well defended and had been prepared to repel an attack for years; supplied with enough ammunition and rations to last them until the time of Uroboros' age and beyond. Elite soldiers and a metal stronghold to only open for shifts between sentries, a security system with strict protocols and a staff who adheres to a rigorous schedule. A small detachment of soldiers of any size could penetrate the inner sanctum of his home, where he had failed to escape so many times, felt next to impossible for Steve, unless...They brought another me with.

"Ah...what the... hell…?"

When the realization buzzed through his head, a sudden sensation of infectious pain began to gradually spread itself throughout his body. The Veronica and Wesker virus could heal any wound and disease Steve garnered, still this illness persisted to weaken him at the point of falling to his knees.

Craning his head, Burnside could see the same weakness overcame Damien, as well. In half the time Steve was affected by this plague to ravage his immune system, Agent Snow's back was on the floor as he coughed and writhed in agony.

"Zero. What's happening to you two?"

Angela was within closer reach to Steve when influenza of pain struck the two. So she tried to help him first. Zero brushed away her attempts to help him "Forget about me, I'll manage." and then points his index to her fellow as Steve tells Angela "Help him!"

Confusion and hysteria became the new norm of the perspective as Steve checked his surroundings. Only the sight of Miller trying to help the afflicted Snow, still falling further into shock from the raw suffering, remained. Hemorrhaging blood and vomiting the substance in equal measure, a distant figure catches the attention of Steve's cat eyes: a slender figure in a tattered duster and trousers, and a similar wide-brim stetson—the kind normal country folks would typically find atop the head of scarecrow amidst a farm's cornfield—starrin with the seething eyes of a demon as its boots stepped close enough into the red lights of the hall's alarms for the scaly complexion of its pale black skin to be seen in horror as it displays pearly needle white teeth in a wicked sneer of pure evil. Delighting in his victims' combined agony.

Steve's eyes started to glow more intensely, resembling the glow of Wesker's the night he killed Ozwell E. Spencer, as he started to lose control. Power as great as his always came with a great price—for Steve the price was his daily injections. Without it, he was at risk of becoming a feral monster with intellect. Every waking thought was becoming the urge to kill everyone in the room—Damien and Angela included. Feeling constricting agony grow more tight, Steve could never raise his rifle—even with his super strength and enhanced stamina, and a nudge of his adrenaline rush—but he could manage with a samurai edge. Pulling one out into his right hand a shot was fired again and again.

The Beast treated the bullet wound as if they were little more than the tedious stings from ants, barely reacting with the impact and blast of the rounds left small holes to heal themselves up in the time Steve could: three seconds flat.

Angela was alerted by the shots and became as, if not more, hostile towards the monsters down the hall and opened fire with her submachine gun, causing it to tammer back with all the damage it was taking square to the chest.

A guttural voice echoed to Steve "How disappointing—and you're supposed to be Wesker's famous pupil?" before retreating.

Angela seemed unaware of the guttural demonic voice, but Steve and Damien could hear it all too well. Leaving a disturbed expression on both of the young men's faces.

Once it was gone, Angela returned to helping Damien with the pain beginning wane and subside as the two of them seemed distracted. Then the Checkmate agent begins to see a shimmer in the space behind Angela as she felt the barrel of a rifle press against her head and the figure of a Umbrella operative appeared behind her with the cloak of invisibility dissipating as he said "Don't move another step, or make another sound; unless you want me to decorate the wall with her brains!"

Seeing the H&K G36K, Snow never dared to move. Steve was not sure of his options, still recovering from what the cowboy-styled uruk did to him.

"What are you doing here? And give me a good excuse for why I shouldn't kill you on the spot right now!" Vector demanded.

Steve may have still been struggling with his own vision, but his hearing, however, recovered from the high pitched screeching sound after a moment to pass following the abominable tyrant departed from tormenting them. The coarser voice behind his gas mask was the clue to always give him away.

Struggling to move "Vector, stop! They're with me." Steve pleaded with him. Even though he did not give a damn or have concern for the woman's life, Damien clearly cared and saving her would help gain his trust and placate some of the grudge Snow currently had against him.

He could barely stand, or even perch himself on his own knew, still all Steve needed was the sound of his own voice and the sight of his face for Vector to stop. A fortunate turnout for their predicament—Vector survived Raccoon City. If he could fight off a horde of the damned, killing two human and capturing a wounded humanoid Tyrant would be child's play for someone of his skills.

"Subject…?No—Zero." Vector lowered his weapon immediately at the sight of his former colleague.

Phew. One less problem to contend with.

When the suppressed rifle was off her, Angel stood on her feet with weapon in hand as she regained her bearings to aim for the man's head; Damien in turn duplicated her actions by pulling out a black and silver Samurai Edge with a compensator. "Drop your weapon and put your hands above your head!"

Then again, maybe I spoke too soon,

Vector refused to back down as he resumed training his weapon on Miller. Now instead of one problem to defuse, Steve had two. "I have a better idea." So he finally forced himself to walk over and draw both his Samurai Edges and says with one against Vector and another against Angela "Let me give the three of you a hint—Me—filling two of you up with lead unless your guns aren't down in the next ten seconds."

Vectior was without a reason to doubt Steve would follow through with his his threat, just as Angela had scant provocation to question his willingness to kill for the sake of continuing the mission—an hour ago she witnessed him condemn an untold number of her friends to a horrible end of exquisite suffering at the claws of of Lickers, to spare the rest of Damien's team from the same fate. If Zero was capable of being so amoral and opportunistic to make a sacrifice of reprehensible magnitude, then killing her for circumventing progress seemed more than possible. Miller managed to bring her weapon down a second behind Vector. Saving her leadless neck.

When she ceased aiming, Damien was obligated to follow suit and put his pistol away.

"Now, Vector...—"

"I know, I know. I'll try to resist the impulse to shoot them in the face. Unless of course you've suffered a psychotic break, then I can just wait until you snap out of it." Operative Vector assures him. "I'm assuming falling off your rocker is the reason you're working with these Government stooges."

Taking the hint of his old acquaintance's assumption, Steve replied "No. I still have all my marbles in the bag."

"You must have. Why else would they be here with you."

"Because I'm not in charge of the H.C.F.: Archangel is; and he insisted on working with Kennedy and Checkmate." Steve argued. "Now where are the others—I highly doubt you survived this long by yourself."

"No—My squad is still here, too. We managed to reach Arkham's nerve center during the attack."

Damien suddenly interposed "Who attacked you?"

"Well I'm guessing the Orc in a goofy cowboy getup." Steve joked. "Seeing as how the only thing we've found since we arrived aside from corpses."

Vector looks at them; not sure whether to be irritated by the jibber-jabber or amused with how Steve was more accurate in his guess than the operator realized. "Actually, Zero is more right than he thinks." he told "In the archives we recovered in Russia, there was a mention to this B.O.W. dubbed The Creeper. An advanced Tyrant: a T-model with no number or regulator to limit power; created by a radical division of the Umbrella corporation called White Umbrella."

"What?" Damien gasped. As soon Vector divulged the revelation, Damien's face morphed into a state of horror. "That 'thing' was The Creeper?"

Steve looks back to him, curious to know more. "I take it you've seen something similar to this before, Snow?"

"Yeah, The Creeper and White Umbrella. A decade ago there this biohazard similar to Raccoon City, around the same time, too, in Louisiana. The Creeper was one of the two freaks they deployed to kill specific survivors. But I destroyed it, blew a RPG-7 in the face just to be sure."

"News flash, Snow: it's still breathing; and walk and continuing to be a pain in the ass."

The conversation could have gone on, but they needed to move. "We can finish this later." Angela told them. Vector agreed "Roger. Let's regroup back at the safe-zone. We're too exposed out here."

Steve and Damien could not agree more with Angela and the ex-Umbrella employee. Who motioned his head back as they walked down the bloody hall "By the way, Lawson is going to need a word with you when we get there, Zero."

Caleb meanwhile gearing up with his team, as the Sea King transporting him and Kennedy prepared to dock in the hanger. Jumping out as the door opened and fired his suppressed and full automatic CZ-75 in one hand and slashing and hacking off heads and limbs with a sword in the other. Fighting their way through the horde of Majinis loitering around in the derelict base.

All the while Caleb is yelling to his and Leon's people "Okay men, time to go to work. Watch for Zero." and then in the fray joking amidst the mayhem "Party time!"

**Arkham Part 3: A New Dawn**

The center of Arkham had become slightly darker and developed a gloomy charm since his last visit ended. As the central command of the facility the nexus station was made to be both small in the priority of size and space granted to it by the creators of the facility, but by the same token was supplied with the best equipment to ensure it was able to perform ahead of every department housed inside.

"We're almost there." Vector told them. Damien refused to believe him—and not just because he was a ex-Umbrella employee. "You've been saying that for the past hour, Vector."

"Yes. But we were nowhere near the door when I told you." Vector assured him.

Every step of the way, in-between his occasional exchange of comments with Damien and Angela, Vector spared some of his breath so he could relay to Steve the events of what happened in the month to follow Wesker's death—the base was besieged on two fronts from the east wing and hanger; in the same time period as the attack a A.I., one the science division had been developing based on the Red Queen program, managed to gain control of the system and initiated a lock for the code black. Then every day to transpire until Steve arrived was utilized by Wolf Pack to fight off the Creeper and the Majini forces supporting it.

Showing them to the entrance, a scan swooped over Steve, then Damien and Angela, and then finally the rest of the Checkmate team behind them. "Vector, Field Recon; and Subject Zero, field operative." Steve was unsurprised to hear Wesker's database recognized them, as accurate in the records of everyone under his thumb as the system was cold and calculating. But when the scan came to the rest of the party present, he was given an unwelcomed surprise.

"Entrance denied. Unauthorized personnel present—terminate to progress further."

Burning up with sweat trickling down his face and chest, and tired from the arduous day; Steve had no patience left for the machine, struggling to control the impulse to shoot at the A.I. every second he continued to breath. Maybe I should shoot the screen, or pummel the door down, or...wait a minute.

In the midst of contemplating the multitude of ways for him to vandalize his way past the door, he turns to the only Wolf Pack member present and asks "Hey Vector; the A.I. running the systems now, does it adhere to the same protocol as us?"

"Yes. I think?" Vector answered before asking the intentions behind his question and Steve walked close to the scanner and said in a more commanding voice "Command: override, passcode: Archon."

The others may never know but everything man made can be made meekly. For every protocol Wesker had painstakingly put into place, Steve knew there was a loophole to move around, and in some cases can be circumvented with one the many ways his commander had created to cheat his way around: a secret passcode; and Steve knew everyone of them from all the years he worked so closely with Wesker.

None of his company present expected Steve to have such a easy way out of the predicament, not did they understand what he was trying to do until the robotically synthesized returned in response "Command acknowledged. Standby."

Vector was not a man known to be surprised easily, so when Steve managed to open the door without his method requiring him to kill a single person he thought he was hearing something to not really be present as Vector whispered under his breath "Damn." before leading them inside.

Upon entering the small fort the Wolf Pack managed to create from the small bits and sections they had segregated from the rest of the ravaged facility, Vector explained what was happening to his squad. Lupo and Beltway were the only ones Steve managed to glimpse when he started to search. To his own amusement they reacted indifferent to working with outsiders and would be grateful if doing so means they get to leave the hellhole they were inside miles behind them in a helicopter. These soldiers inside had obviously been fighting too long. By the short ration and the bullets and magazines to remain, Steve could understand how his arrival must have seemed like a god send to their eyes; Wolf Pack was legendary, able to withstands waves of zombies in Raccoon city, but even they had limits depending on the circumstances they find themselves in.

_Really strict with standards, Burnside though. Joking to himself and he continued on._

None of it mattered to him though, all Steve cared about was searching to find the one person he needed to find still breathing. Until he finds a familiar face staring back into his own with the pale blue circle in her eyes. She had become slightly battle hardened by the previous months, with most of her hair brushed back and braided while only a small dark strand remained free.

Director Cara Lawson, head of the Lazarus program and renowned expert of the Veronica strain to the T-virus, was found sitting in a room filled with medical supplies with her hands and attention fixated on some type of antiviral medications with a Glock holstered on her waist when Steve emerged through the door into the same room of isolation she had situated herself in. Upon seeing her again Steve was at a loss for words to properly convey how giddy he really was to see her, almost overwhelmed with joy—a brand rarity to surprise him on account of how he and Cara have not spoken to nor seen each other in nearly a decade.

Hearing an australian accent in her "Hello Steve," as Cara welcomed him. Half smiling she asked "How long has it been...a decade?"

Smiling back at her Steve corrects Cara "Seven-and-a-half—but who's counting?" with a laugh.

In the moment Steve dropped his guard, failing to keep his super hearing alert for an intrusion during his ensuing conversation with Lawson. Unable to here Damien secretly intruding onto their meeting.

"So should I presume you brought the rest of your Lobo crew with you?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa?" Steve interjected. "Seriously, Cara, Lobo? You're going to compare the H.C.F.'s best with a piss poor parody of a man with metal bones and the son of a clone and some pompous who shoots energy rays from his eyes?" Joking "That's just...hurtful."

"Oh don't be such a drama queen." the conversation continued on in a casual state. Thankfully with no hugging like in those sappy movies mom and dad used to watch. As Steve persisted the chat "And yes: Caleb's here. Likely taking control of the hanger."

Damien must have fallen into shock—as Steve and Cara continued their conversation into the evening—contemplating the scenarios to confront Steve. Before finally he broke in "As much as I'd love to watch this go on, 'Steve,' we do have a mission to finish; and a A.I. to deal with."

Steve craned back his head, astounded to see Huntsman had been nearby the whole time and horrified to see his secret discovered. "You've been there this whole time?"

"I snuck up on you, like a ninja. So I heard everything!" Snow answered. "Steve Burnside, huh?"

GGGRRREEEAAAT. Uncertain whether he should do anything. "I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out, Snow. Hell—when I escaped West Africa I practically broadcasted my real name over an open channel to find Caleb—but then again, maybe the author of this poor show of my life has problems with continuity."

"Well noone was listening. Obviously." Damien responded. Then he looked to the lady scientist for a momentary glance "I'm assuming you and Archangel agreed to this ridiculous misadventure for her."

"So what if I am? Your presence here is more alarming." Cara cut herself into the conversation. Then Steve explains to her "Caleb agreed to work with the B.S.A.A. and Checkmate because we needed help— and since Arkham was the only base left to search—we didn't have much of a choice left."

"...Help? Help for—" Soon a thunderous blast shot itself to replace the outside normalcy of dead silence in a giant kaboom. "Never mind. Steve, I'll get my research data, I need you to retrieve a A.I. in the main server room."

 _Main server room seems a tad excessive_. Nexus point had been created solely for a director and a her assistance to manage the facility and maintain any and all research data recorded for Wesker, but Cara made the multiple storage rooms redundant with her eidetic memory and had no need for any personal assistant as a multitasker—except for the server room, an isolated portion of nexus reserved by Director Lawson for a laptop and confidential files she was only permitted to show to Wesker himself. In that room, Steve found more.

Hearing the phrase "Good evening, Zero." from a disembodied voice as entered the room, while Cara and Damien gathered what remained of the staff and security forces. Steve searched from one corner of the walls to the next; expecting to find a metallic box or large machine in the room and instead only found the laptop sitting in the room and asks "Who are you?"

"I am designated as Environment Combat Analysis Preparation program, known alternatively by the moniker Echo."

Seeing no image for the A.I. and hearing only the voice synthesized from the small computer and said "Okay 'Echo.' we have to go." Unsure of where to probe for the right button to eject the the program from the computer.

Echo persisted in ensuring Steve's day would become prolonged and arduous. "Negative. Protocol dictates that I may only leave the station with Recovery One for-."

"I am Recovery One. You need another pass code, yeah? S.T.A.R.S. Now how in the hell do I get you out of this laptop? I need something more secure."

"There is no need to be vulgar. Simply eject my chip from the computer and place me into a portable device—such as a PDA."

Steve did just as Echo told him and placed the device within Jenkin's old device after recovering it from the data drive. Then hands it to Cara as they leave. Leaving with their forces to the source of the explosion, confirmed by the AI as the result of Archangel and Deadshot's encroachment into the vicinity.

The sounds of a warzone erupted down the long halls, an unconventional war, easy for Steve to recognize—jogging his memory back to the day of his escape from Kijuju zone after his life began to spiral far beyond from the reach of his control once again. Approaching the site of more carnage where Deadshot was firing a suppressed MSR as Caleb slaughtered Majini with a combination of decapitation courtesy of his swords and headshots from his CZ's; "Leon, meanwhile, fired his Silver Ghost at the monsters. Discharging a bullet into the head of the next Majini to reach him. Acting on gut instinct alone Steve charged into the chaotic fight, firing his weapon wildly in bursts of five then continuous spray of lead rounds and then back into five bursts—killing his way through the Majini horde with the Checkmate and Ex-U.S.S. squads advancing in tow behind him. Angela and Damien advanced up the line more ferociously, eliminating enemies in droves, than Boone or any other member of their squad.

Lupo's squad had been contending with these parasites for months, yet sustained themselves through and today they powered on to kill them with heightened zeal of someone new to the fight—Steve had to surmise the prospect of being free once more of the nightmare they were living in. Strangely enough The Creeper never appeared to finish what the monster had started earlier, only the Majini remained to finish the fight.

When the clearing formed all to remain of the Majini were corpses once again dead—as they should stay—while Steve discovered himself washed in the splatter of their blood. Holding up his two Samurai edges, the fire eaters, he put a bullet in the head of every reanimated corpse who head's failed to retain a hole. Showing no mercy to the undead in his methodical execution.

"It's done, Zero. Their finished. Maybe…" Caleb stopped him from continuing the overkill drill of headshots. Sending Steve to shut down as he stared at the ground's new padding of dead meat, then leaving to be alone when the deed was done and Burnside could finally afford some time find a particular room of importance.

Leon wanted to begin a sweep of the building and every one of his people to participate, but Damien refused. While Caleb and Cara were making plans to transport everything they needed from Arkham—AI, staff members, and all—Steve just disappeared from the scene; and when he did Damien grew curious as to what purpose.

"Steve?" Damien called out. Sifting through the wreckage of old Arkham's detritus while the scavengers and clean up teams continued to examine the other rooms, he found his old friend gazing at a pair of hanging chains in a state of self-hypnosis; long into the mission's latest hour, Steve continued to linger as he ostentatiously circled the room in recollection of some dark memory to transpire here. Not ignoring Damien, of course—just preoccupied by his own thoughts to think straight—Steve finally answered to him "Yes, Damien?"

"What is this place?" Huntsman asked. Watching the H.C.F. operative move along the room like a man possessed by some unnameable force compelling him. Grappling one of the chains by the shackle.

"This where they broke me." Steve replied "Where Wesker and Krauser spent a year breaking me down, subjecting me to physical and mental torture. Until I finally cracked under all that weight."

"How can you not hate Wesker after subjecting you to all that pain?"

"Who say's I don't sometimes? He watched and participated in my daily torture, then molded me into cold ruthless killer. Another one of his assassins. But...he was only human, just like I was." Steve was not sure how he could clearly convey his point of view. "Once upon a time he had someone he cared about, then they abandoned him; He had a friend who was at the same time his rival; and the closest person he would ever know to a father-figure made him to serve an end so he killed him and had the blood of his own creator on his hands." Steve doubted Damien understood his side, but continued. "And he had a point, in his own twisted amoral way, Damien; every day the human race brings this world closer to self-destruction, I didn't agree with his plan but the alternative to sit by and allowing the world to be destroyed by the evil of my former people is not a path I could follow."

"So murder is a simpler solution to you?" Damien argued. "Murderings thousands of innocent people for the mistakes a few hundred have made!"

When he finished, Burnside shrugged his head. "I don't have a inkling. I ought to, but I don't." No longer certain what right or wrong is anymore. "You see that part was always easy for me: killing. Snuffing out some random dingus unlucky enough to have a death mark placed on their head." Steve told him. "I've always been that way since the prison island." He could almost feel the water forming in his eyes. "You wanna call me a monster? Have at it. There's hardly a day where I don't call myself that. Or a morning where I don't wake up to look in the mirror and see the animal I have become."

"You're not a monster, Steve—monsters and men can kill, but only a true monster feel no remorse after the fact." became the only response Damien had.

In the moment of content and self-loathing Steve could not deny his hatred for a great deal of his life to transpire after the events on Rockfort Island. Feeling all the hate and anger to have ruled his every thought since then vanish. Then his thoughts turned back to the past and he asks his old pal "Does Claire know I'm alive—who I am now—what I've become?"

Damien nodded a no and then informed his friend "Until today no evidence was ever found to confirm whether you had been revived or not—aside from Jill mentioning your Zero persona a time or two, nothing about you is known by the B.S.A.A. or by my government."

Bearing his words in mind "I guess you'll have to tell her eventually." Steve said. Hearing Caleb call his name to leave he prepared to depart when he told Damien "Thanks Snow, for everything, but…" he turned a question on him "These things to attack the base, do you have any idea where they could have come from?"

"One: Ajax, a numb psychopath who used to work for White Umbrella. Beyond that, who knows." Damien answered.

"Zero, haul ass; double time!" Caleb was calling again. More impatiently. So Steve and Damien gave one last silent goodbye gesture before the latter watched as the former dash out from the room with a "See you around." Leaving for the next Sea King to leave Steve boarded and they were off, seating himself next to Cara and across from Caleb, flying in the direction of their nearby ships along a open coastline of water and melting ice; and Caleb told them "Next stop: Polis."


	4. Interval 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closure...so overrated

**Interval 01: Personal Matter**

**Somewhere Along The United State's West Coast**

Steve leveled his weapon from the seat of his motorcycle.

"Another day," he reflected ominously. "Another dingus with a death mark."

Steadying his M4A1, with every possible attachment imaginable for the weapon, Burnside peered through his sunglasses into the holographic weapon sight—prepared and willing to take the shot: shooting out the front tires, causing the rubber to be skinned off the rims at the squeeze of his trigger—resulting in pivoting and turning violently, the van's driver ultimately would lose control started to turn on the vehicle's own side and flip over five times and ended with a slow sixth as Steve lowered the acceleration of his speed.

The target—an anonymous rookie seller on the black market lacking enough survival instinct and brain cells to know he should never interfere with one of Ada's latest schemes. Felix managed to escape Caleb in Polis and Deadshot in New York, living up to the meaning of his name: lucky, but Steve was the most ruthless hunter of them all; and he never failed to take down a mark—dead or alive.

First the security team escorting Felix Bones emerged, exiting the wreckage of their escape with the individual considered precious cargo still inside, brandishing MP5s aiming to discharge on Steve's face only for Steve to return fire with his assault rifle; killing each of them with their faces and other exposed bodily areas not covered by kevlar now masked with holes and crimson liquid.

None of them stood a chance. Even if they had the opportunity to get a proper shot at Steve with perfect aim and accuracy he still had the advantage the gunmen would never have— fast reflexes and enhanced speed to afford Burnside the luxuries Wesker once benefitted from in a fair fight with Chris and Jill. Allowing Steve to decimate Felix's protection team.

When the final man went down on his back, bleeding out heavily, Steve pulled one of his sidearms out from under his shoulder and advanced with the assault rifle hanging onto him by a strap.

Felix emerged from the wreckage finally able to stand on his own feet as his hunter approached with a pistol ready to kill him—so he reached for his own weapon, a Glock, and within a second of the monster after groping the side arm suffered a sharp piercing pain to his shoulder and stomach, as well as three more up and down his left leg. Bones was unequipped with kevlar as the other were, more vulnerable, too.

"Felix Bones...I've been looking for you all night." Steve told him.

Walking over to his prey, Burnside kicks his enemy's gun far from the extent to which Felix could reach with his arms. Leaving him to groan in pain as Steve grabs him by the collar of his blood stained t-shirt and makes him cry out in agony, much louder than before, as he slams him into the wreck that was once Bones' ride.

"What do you want...?"

Felix was afraid, rightfully so. Knowing all the horrible things he did as Zero, Steve could partially validate his state of fear.

Looking down at him with a smile, Steve bends down on a knee as he re-holsters his weapon to meet the man face to face. "What do I want?" he repeated Felix's own question before answering "A lot of things, things you could never offer, and unfortunately for you my employer needs you dead; an' I always deliver."

Not sure how to carry the moment forward Steve pulls out his knife and said "But she didn't say your death has to be quick." A series of agonizing screams carried on afterwards; thankfully the road was deserted and of seldom use by the locals—Steve needed answers for a personal matter and Ada promised him the information as a reward for her bounty on Felix.

"Please stop!" Felix cried. Pleaded at the end of another long slash to occur above his abdomen. "Whatever she's paying you I can double it...triple. I'll give you anything you want: drugs, money, even gun. Name it and all shower you with 'em, just please stop."

Steve seemed to genuinely consider his proposition, contemplating the pros and cons of the offer, and asks "What do you have on Ada Wong?"

"I don't. My boss, Ajax, she wanted to get close to him—shine up to the big man hisself—then I got in her way. And I'd do it again just to sully whatever she's up to."

"Really?" Steve whispered "Well in that case…" then promptly snaps Bones' neck "You're free of some shoulder weight."

"Sully," he laughed at the last words Felix uttered. "You probably don't even know what the word means, reprobate."

Leaving the area collecting the weapons along the ground, the only remaining lethal was a bomb, Steve detonated an explosion on the desert road once he was safely far from the area of destruction. Leaving most evidence to his own presence here obliterated in the blast, by the time an investigation can find anything tying directly to Steve he would be halfway home.

Explosions, bullets, and lots of excitement—at least I won't die of boredom. Steve contemplated, tossing the detonator switch to the ground and drives off. _Time to catch a plane._

**Polis**

The Polis, a oil rig carcass built decades ago in clusters connected together to form a city in the ocean, now a haven for outcasts without a nation to call one's own nor notion of patriotism—wanted men and women, and amoral figures alike flock to the lawless land in the sea; jokingly called by some of its denizens "Merc City."

Home to outlaws, Steve Burnside discovered on the first month of his arrival how easily he became socially compatible to the populace of the new Nassau. All like him: amoral with a shady past. Within a mesh of the Polis' Parish district at the lower levels, the elder sector of the structure, Steve continued to wait. When he returned from his mission in California, Steve attended to a desk with his laptop, ready to take another syringe shot for the daily dose of PG67A/W, and waited until he was contacted by Ada, again, concerning his reward for the Felix bounty.

Checking for new contracts at the pendings of a further update, playing with his knife like a toy: tossing the tool up and having the weapon returned to his palm by the grace of gravity; examining his gear and grappling gun, and thoroughly cleaning his pistols; performing every possible task, regardless of how trivial, to make the seconds and hours go by with increased haste.

A rigorous routine into the following day, Ada returned his call by arriving at the docks. Four figures behind Wong's in tow.

Facing her with an uneasy sense of security, Steve put on a cynical face—they had not spoken since she betrayed Wesker, and every moment Steve was with her felt like he was being played in someway or fashion.

"Steve, you look good for someone trapped here." She greeted him almost genuinely pleased, matching his stern silence with gleeful optimism. Dressed in the black and red business attire of her own interpretation of a diplomat, with a small choke collar around her neck no doubt to get a man or two on the job to have machinations in their heads for her to manipulate to her advantage, while walking around in her usual high heels.

"Trapped might be a little dramatic. More like...a poor choice of living arrangements." He looked over her shoulder, the brawny men behind her were holding the other two individuals with bags over their heads.

"What is this, Ada? You promised information."

"Yeah...I might have mis-appraised the value of your prize."

"Meaning?"

"You'll see. Where do you want them?"

Storage Building D became the next destination for the small portioned crew, in a sector of the Parish district used for storage, where a room unoccupied by ammunition and injectors. Where Steve tells Ada's bodyguards "Leave them in here."

After she motioned her head at the men angrily for failing to heed Steve's order, Ada tells the grunts "Do it!"

Tied up in two separate chairs, the captives were limited in options other than to sit down and not make any further muffled noises. First he pulled off the mask from the eldest of the two; a sallow complexion even in the dim light of the room, Steve's face was alien to the man under the wool bag even when seen but he recognized the man all too well from the imprints of his old life. Steve would never forget the face of his father's best friend: Joe Hunt.

"Mr. Hunt this is a acquaintance of mine who's pissed at you," Ada explained to the flabbergasted man. "Pissed off acquaintance, meet Joseph Hunt."

Ada smiled at her return to a familiar sight. This time, Steve's stern silence was focused on the guest with seething hatred in his eyes as his black gloved hands tightened into hard fists prepared to punch the man with enough force to detach his head from his neck.

"I'll leave you two boys to settle this. Have a blast, Zero. You know where to find me." femme fatale agent said, excusing herself from the room.

Leaving her presents with the angry man and to the many machinations that formed inside his darkest thoughts.

Many times Steve imagined this moment. Fantasized all the possible ways to dispense his revenge on "the bastard who ruined his life when it was just beginning," ranging from the most agonizing of torture to emptying his magazines into the man at the most random of places throughout the body—but neither the former nor the latter would offer the closure Steve craved so desperately—and he had something more special in mind for his captive.

"Hello Joe." Steve said, mockingly.

He turned his attention to the second bagged head that remained untouched by him and then back to Hunt. Joseph Hunt remained muddled. Ignorant of how truly boned he was that tonight.

Eleven years ago before Steve was absconded from the day-to-day normalcy in life of an American teenager to Rockfort Island Roger Burnside and Joseph Hunt had been close friends since High School—Joe had been everything to the family: the best man to Roger and Martha's wedding, the godfather to their son, the neighbor down the road who could always be dependable. He was the man Steve knew as Uncle Joe, the surrogate for a sibling his parents never had. Then...one bad day came on the horizon for that perfect life the four knew all so well: Roger was caught to be greedy. Umbrella, somehow, learned he was selling company secrets—someone in Mr. Burnside's life informed them and the ramifications were Martha's death and Steve's current miserable state of existence.

"Do I know you?" Joe asked.

The gaul of the traitor was infuriating for the operative to bear—He dared to pretend to be oblivious to Steve's identity, to his face, and act the innocent nobody.

Steve was reserved of emotion, answering "Just someone whose life you fucked up." and struggling to hold back every hateful emotion. Anger and malice the more prevalent.

Removing the second bag the young Burnside found with a dumbfounded expression the face of a teenager. Sharing the dark brown hair of his father, before the strands went grey, with a fair complexion and a pair of amber eyes. Unfamiliar with his face, Steve sent for some of his own grunts to take the adolescent to one of their cells. Savoring Joe's screams, he screamed the same way Steve did the day Umbrella executed his mother in front of his very eyes.

"No! No! Leave Tom alone!" He demanded. Then began to speak of threats to Steve "If you hurt him so help me god…"

"You'll what, exactly?" Steve scoffed friggedly at the superannuated man, practically on the path of becoming senile. Laughing "Kill me." as his main guess.

"Yeah…"

"You already killed me." Steve's response caused Joe to become confused. Then Steve realized he truly had no inkling of who he was. "You really don't remember me, do you? Maybe this'll ring some bells: my name is Steve Burnside. You sold out my father, your best friend; and because of you I was sent to die on a island with my dad after you ratted him out while my mother was killed!"

"Steve…? Roger's kid." he seemed genuinely stunned, as if a revelation had just been dropped onto him one morning. "But you're dead."

That made Steve smile. _He remembers me,_ he thought in sadistic glee and tells his former godfather "I should be, but you're going to wish I was. A hell of a lot, and then some."

His captive was ready to retort a argument and Steve ensured he never had the chance.

Then the knife came out and Joe knew he was seconds away from experiencing the worst imaginable, and felt the cold sting of the knife penetrating his skin. Hunt made screams and cries, the kind Felix made. The sort Steve had screamed over and over again into a near infinite cycle when he himself had been tortured in a more painful manner. Showing no mercy as he cut and stabbed him enough to not kill him, while at the same time avoiding all his vital organs.

Killing Joe would not bring his family back from the dead, but Steve wanted him to know the pain he has felt for the last decade. "You cost me everything, Joe." Forcing his former fake uncle to suffer the grief he experienced in emotional pain through physical pain. The cry for "Mercy, mercy!" was invoked many times through the torture. When he stopped cutting into his skin, Steve abandoned the knife planted into the man's bleeding leg and patched up the wounds with alcohol in each. Breaking fingers and _other_ bones not along the spinal cord.

"PLEASE!" Joe pleaded for reprieve from the anguish he was in. Making several attempt to appeal towards any empathy remaining in Steve. "I'm sorry, Stevie. I didn't know!"

 _He didn't know._ _He didn't know!_ Steve imagined those words replaying in his mind in a cycle, causing him to become more infuriated each time. "You caught my dad selling company secrets— _Umbrella's secrets._ What did you think would happen!?" Twisting the knife in the leg as he interrogated the man. "They must have promised you something enticing. What was it? Money, drugs, women? Stop me if I guess it."

"I thought they would just fire 'im! The secrets he sold were small grade; small change information. I thought they would just let him go."

With those words, Joseph Hunt consummated his fate. _He's just some buffoon who made a stupid call._ He knew why his family was dead and he was alone, why he was doomed to be a monster; and it sucked to know the truth.

"You're going to kill me, I know it. I can see it in your cat eyes..." He was right as Steve had stopped trying to hide his tyrant eyes and allowed the pain to emerge from behind the tint of the usual color.

"Just please let mu son go—don't punish Tom for my mistakes."

The request seemed to register with Steve emotionally, allowing himself to actually consider the proposal, as he pulled out his weapons; and then says "I'll think on it," before pulling the trigger and discharging a bullet into Hunt's head, right above the left brow. And he did just that for every moment to pass until the next morning. Steve never thought for a single day following his revival about a notion of his own moral code to live by, he simply performed deeds he believed to be necessary for the good of Wesker's vision of a better world, and—to a personal extent—for the best interest of his friends. Now, with his other prisoner Steve contemplated the conundrum sitting before him. In terms of the belief in a higher purpose there was no sway over Steve. He was a pragmatist, finding every occurrence to not transpire in front of his own two eyes to be unrealistic and mere fiction to be considered mumbo jumbo. Just as ethics and morals were foreign to him, in the ways used by the normal folks of modern society.

Joseph is dead. Steve did not feel different about the outcome, only the hole in his life remained the same; Tom was now fatherless like himself and just as alone if his mother is dead. Burnside could kill him, but what would it accomplish. Seeing his restrained prisoner, Steve looked at his knife feeling hollow. _There's been enough killing today._ Umbrella and Wesker robbed him of his humanity, Steve decided not to do worse than they to Tom and then cut the binds.

Tom had paid enough for his father's crime. He could start over and do better than Steve or worse: the choice was his. He has a second chance at life, they both do; without interference of others.

Ordering his men to escort the free former prisoner off of Polis, Steve moved onto his room and prepared to sleep. Hopefully the next day promised something more heartening than today.

 **The End.** **For Now...?**


	5. Interval 02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another job.

**Interval 02: A Job Offer**

**The Polis** — **Parish district**

Steve stared down from the small spaced balcony—waiting for his target to arrive, he proceeded to check his pistol and grenades during the wait. Pulling back on the chamber slide while examining the face to each passing stranger.

He would show. Steve knew, _if he was going to be anywhere it would be here._

The parish district was nice. As the oldest sector of the polis station it was also the most populated from the years of new members occupants arriving and adding -on to the structure for the other districts; thus making the historic piece of Polis susceptible to the many criminal elements. Perfect for Steve to do his work.

The spacious bazaar down below would provide the ideal hunting ground in his search for the prey: a bioterrorist named Luc Martel.

Ever since the incident in the Kijuju anonymous zone, the B.S.A.A. have grown increasingly interested in pursuing many of the perpetrators involved in the matter—who escaped before the proper authorities could apprehend them. Many of whom escaped to places such as Polis where the laws are as ambiguous as the morales of the criminals who dwell here; and the bioterrorism security assessment alliance would have as much luck finding them through the channels as Redfield's old S.T.A.R.S. team would have had in exposing the truth about Umbrella after the mansion incident. So they hired Steve to bring in the man dead or alive—preferably alive, for a bonus.

The crowds gathered as they do every evening. Congregating for the various goodies put up for sale, in everything from food to ammunition for any available price on the market.

Steve holstered his handguns and then a shotgun slung over his back by a strap. Spotting a familiar face in the crowd resembling the wanted posting; walking through the marketplace with three guards in tow to a transaction with another of the parish's inhabitants. A irredeemable bioterrorist meeting another member of the underworld amidst an ocean of criminal lowlifes. Yeah, no way that could be a disaster in progress.

The probability was too great to risk. Steve had all the information he needed and validation to drop in on them, so he jumped down from the balcony ready to go to work.

He made a loud and sudden entrance as he dropped to the ground. Hitting the surface with a loud metallic sound of a pound. Many denizens took a step back shocked to see Burnside in the open public.

"It's the bounty hunter." one patron gasped.

"Time to go…"

Everyone with survival instincts or common sense knew what it meant to see Steve on the streets: trouble. Luc Martel possessed neither of these attributes. Only an abundance of arrogance.

"Zero! Finally tracked me down, huh? " Luc gloated at the bounty hunter. Looking over to his guards for support and then started barking at them "Somebody shoot this mother—" before he was stopped in mid sentence by the gunshots of Steve's pistol as he gunned down each of his guards with a single shot to each in the chest and face.

"You were saying."

The people made a clearing and fell silent at seeing the bodies. Luc was instantly cured of his hubris.

"Now, you have two choices. Option one…" Steve knew Luc would never surrender but it's always nice to have options. Luc responded to his options by running before Burnside could even finish his sentence. Bolting back through the crowd.

"Seriously!"

Pedestrians and grunts for hire alike to clutter made an opening after seeing the two men running their way as Steve continued to give chase through the clearing. He was fast, super fast, but it has limits now.

During the pursuit Luc and Steve began taking paths on separate height levels. Burnside stayed on a more higher level, out of Martel's scope of sight; making it easy for Steve to drop on him from high up. Taking him down and locking him in restraints.

Zipping the cuffs around Martel's wrists, both tightly held together behind his back in a uncomfortable position and state of existence, Steve could feel more eyes peering on his activities. A common feeling during a job in the parish; but the murmuring uproar, the cacophony sound of tough toned man voices grumbling to his left made Steve grow ostensibly with the source of the noise—turning his head to face a cavalcade of mercenaries, all clearly under Luc's payroll, readying their many assault rifles and shotguns to liberate their benefactor.

"A thousand dollars for the one to kill this son of a bitch, and another thousand for cutting these binds lose."

The auburn stubbles of Steve's mug raised in a smile. Pulling his own shotgun out from its holster on his back and proceeded to clear the alley of its fortune soldiers.

Another eventful job complete.

His task finished Steve left him for the recovery team in a cell.

Later that same day—much, much later—there was a guest waiting for Steve. She was older than him, the same-age-as-Ada kind of older, with long brown hair with seldom strands of pale blond faded away under the brunettes. Seated in his chair Jill Valentine made a smirk of amusement to the gradual surprise on Burnside's face as she said "Hello, Zero."

They knew one another...briefly in the past—When Jill still wore a raven mark over her face with a hood and a red glowing scarab shaped device over her chest called P30.

"Hi Jill…" Steve could see her but was still not believing it, thinking as if his eyes were turning blearily on him, looking over his shoulder out of curiousity to see if a tail had been following him and then back inside "What are you doing here? How did you find my room?"

"You've never been hard to track down, it's more of a challenge to catch you off guard." Valentine explained. She went on to tell Steve as she stood up from the chair "I was dispatched to retrieve Martel and thought I'd 'drop by' before I left."

"Well, you've dropped by. I've seen you. Goodbye..."

"Now hold on, I didn't just come to say hello: I came to offer you a job."

"And why would I take a job directly from you? You're practically BFFs with my three least favorite people in the world."

"You can't seriously be taking Wesker's side on this, can you?" Jill pulled down the neck of her shirt; showing the marks lefts from where the the wired syringes of the P30 still lingered, and were continuing to heal, to emphasise her point. Then to the bits of pale blond in her long brunette hair. "For God's sake, Steve—look what he did to us. He brainwashed me; filled your head with lies; forced me to attack Chris, one of my oldest friends; he loaded you with enough hate for Claire and Leon to follow him blindly; he made both of us into murderers and accomplices in Tricell's bioterrorism!"

The facade of friendly banter was gone.

"And where were they when this was happening, hm...!?" Steve demanded to know. "Where were the Redfields when we needed them?" There was no denying Jill's argument, Steve could at least admit that to himself...and Jill. "You were with us for what, three years? Your people assumed you were dead, and you would have been if Wesker left you to die. They declared me dead for longer than that, a decade, and I held onto some small hope that they would come and they never did."

Jill did not bother to debate with him. Opting not to waste her breath in a fight when there was no winner at the end, knowing only more pain would be at the end. So she tells Steve "I didn't come here to fight with you about the past, and I'm not going to force you to forgive your grievance with Chris and Sheva; but I need extra muscle and you're the only one left to recruit."

"For what, company woman?"

"A mission in the states." Jill informed him. Stepping closer to him so they were a few step away, tempting Steve to reach for one of his guns; for a little ensurance. "A outbreak erupted in a suburban community called Bastion. Kind of like what we had in Raccoon city."

"So why don't you and Chris put a squad together? Then you could just go in and kick some zombie ass and rescue whoever is still inside."

"We can't, especially when there's a allegation of bias against Chris and me."

"Bias? From Chris Redfield? The man's one of the most sanctimonious people I've ever heard of." Steve told her. Disbelieving anyone in their right mind would have the stones to accuse a "hero" like him of a double standard. "I mean, I hate his guts more than anyone, but even I think that's bullshit. Respectfully."

"Uh-huh." Jill cynically grunted. Ambiguously. "We managed to Identify most of the survivors still inside, and that's where the problems started: someone important to Chris was inside, and, given how his mission in West Africa went, was denied a request."

"Someone... important...to Chris…? Well if you're here, and last I heard Burton was still training B.S.A.A. recruits, than that means..." Burnside contemplated the possibilities—then he realizes _Claire!_ And then tells her "No! No, hell no!"

"Steve I know this isn't the most convenient circumstance you were hoping for in a job, but you're my only option."

"So you go to a guy with guns and a score to settle with the one needing saving, and just hope he'll let bygones be bygones? I mean, honestly Jill, that has to be the worst idea I have ever heard." He said in response. "And another thing…"

This argument could have continued but Jill knew the secret to winning her former colleague over.

"Four million!"

"What?"

"That's what we're willing to pay you: Four million dollars up-front and another after. The B.S.A.A. aren't the ones setting this up—Damien Snow is, and he secured all the money. All you need to do is help us rescue the survivors, avoid Claire as long as you want to."

"Oh really? That's all…?" Steve asked. Sneaking a small twitch into the corner of his mouth. "Quick thinkers and a fast talkers:I'm sold."


	6. Reunion at Hellmouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awkward reunions

**Reunion at Hellmouth Part 1: Old Friends and Enemies**

**Bastion, Undisclosed location in midwestern America**   
**December, 2009**

The door crashed open, followed by a light thud of the heavy oak. Blasting with a small puff of smoke before "AAAAH" Steve heard his mother screaming. Amidst a blur of bullets tearing through his home as the cries of pain in his mother died out with one final flash as a gunshot leaves him speechless.

"Steve!" his father distantly called "Run, Run and don't look back!"

Again the flashes erupt—filling his father with the openings of multiple holes—this time by a pair of Mac-10's, and Steve was the one pulling the trigger.

The boy fell to his knees, incapable of comprehending his actions at first.

"What…, what have I done?" he asked to himself. Whispering to where only he could hear. "WHAT? HAVE? I? DONE?"

His mind was in shambles. He was alone, alone in darkness with his father's corpse and the blood spatter still fresh on his hands.

Hearing only his own pitiful mental woes, Steve sobbed. _Someone help me. Help me, please._

"Steve…? Steve…?" a voice pleaded. Hearing a sob as devastated as his own. Hearing the voice of a woman. "Please wake up. Wake up!"

And then, at last, Steve Burnside was awake. Feeling the painful sensation to semer in his chest from the rebar to impale him, hearing the new voice to call him back to reality. "Hey Zero. Answer. The. God. Damned. Com!"

Suddenly his memory of recent days returned to Steve. "I'm kinda busy here, Snow. Give me a second—then berate me." Gripping the metal rod to penetrate through his torso and beginning to pull, the operative glimpsed the sight of what remained from his portion of the team.

They were all dead. Killed upon impact from the crash, when a RPG was discharged and exploded at the front of their ride and then sending his flying forward with the driver.

As the last length of the metal left him, Steve could feel himself recovering as his body repaired itself. Then pressed on his earpiece asking "Where are you?"

"Near city hall. What about you?"

The crash left him sore. His back finally healed but still feeling the rough sensation, as he regained his footing to emerge from the derelict building in which he landed. Searching his surroundings to ascertain his own location, Steve responded "About a block, maybe half a block, away from you."

"Good. We know where Claire is now, so I need you and your team to go collect her and the others while we take care of the infected." Damien responded. In the background Steve could hear the fighting, and even from the distance he could hear the gunshot and swearing as they distracted the zombies.

Checking his ammo and two pistols, Steve told him. "I can manage that much, but, Damien, my team's dead. So I'll probably need to sneak around, and it might take me a while longer."

"What? Fuck! Fine, whatever. Just get to the police station, I already called ahead with the pilot and he's enroute to evac us. So move your ass. Double time, and all that shit." He told Steve, and at the mention of where to go Burnside started to run—rushing through the shadows of ruins as the zombies continued to converge towards City Hall. Evading the horde of walking corpses marching towards their own extinction as he continued scuttling to the opposite direction of where his old frenemy awaited him; keeping one Samurai Edge in hand as he motioned closer to the hollow doorway in one last step.

Powering through the painful sensation still in his memory, and focusing on it and the present as if to not do so would be detrimental towards his own feelings of comfort—and to force the memories of his dreams away.

Hopefully, he prayed, for good.

Prepared for a fight, Steve peered his eye over the corner to see the station's new occupants: a ten man squad of men dressed in special forces equipment not unlike those of the H.C.F. prancing about the space of fresh cadavers and firing the suppressed assault rifles into the dead skulls. None of the squadmates noticed him, and Steve was not above using the advantage.

Firing a shot off, Steve walked in killing one with a bullet in the eye. "Hello boys and girls. Looking for something?"

The dead member's fellows made no indication of concern or disturbance at their death. They were cold and apathetic towards any value of his life. The only concern came when the first to speak yelled "It's Zero!"

"Neutralize him!" The leader of their unmerry band barked. And then, complying to the order, they opened fire with their automatic weapons. Not a single shot hit its mark—as Steve dodged every gunshot at inhuman speed—and retaliated soon after, shooting and stabbing, and even ripping one man's arm off, _each_ and _every_ one of them as the man to lose his arm screamed in pain before Steve ended his misery by shooting him in the face. Putting him and the irritating keen of his cry to rest.

"Huh," Steve laughed at their pitiful attempt. "I'm still standing."

Stepping over the bodies. One. By. One.

"Huh. Well that was fun." Steve sighed in disappointment, ejecting the empty magazine from Fire-Eater one as he continued to traverse through the foyer. Unimpressed by the reception to his arrival. "Anyone else home...?"

Silence of the vast emptiness only responded.

"Oh C'mon, I'm not gonna kill you or anything...unless, of course, you try to kill me first. Or something."

Still no response or hint of the survivors.

"Really…? You're gonna make me go through each of these room, one at a time." Toying with the gun in his hand, Steve focused on the first room to check as the weapon circled around his finger, when a sound from behind position in the room caught his attention. Hearing a faint foot step onto the ground in a low pitch and a quick click of a pistol ready to fire, so he primed his own a second ahead of her's. Aiming for the face of...the face of... _Claire Redfield_!

"Well you've found me; so you can quit your bitching already."

Holding his firearm inches from her face, Steve had only access to one eye as she pressed her gun to obstruct the vision in his second. But, still, she looked the same from Burnside's perspective. Her brownish-auburnish hair affixed back into her usual ponytail style and piercing eyes staring back into the coldness of his; and, despite her small increase of age, retained the same face and—Steve imagined—a relative personality to what she possessed during their first encounter on Rockfort Island.

And just like before she was aiming a gun, but unlike back then Steve was holding his own back in kind.

"Well, well. Claire Redfield, just the pest I was looking for. Put the gun down before-"

Once again interrupted in mid-sentence in soprano fashion, Steve felt a new gun aim on him, with a man yelling "You first!" as he readied a rifle and another prepared their shotgun. "Or we fill your ass up with lead."

"That a little unfriendly, don't you think?"

One of the men then emerged from behind his cover with a young woman behind, telling Steve "You're holding a gun to our friend's head. Now put it down!"

"No. Hell no. She pointed her's at me first." Steve defended his action. Muttering "Again," to where only Claire could hear him. "Besides, if I was going to shoot Claire, here, I would have done it already."

"We're not asking. We're telling." The woman behind countered, joining by the man's side aiming a glock towards Steve's face. "Now drop the damn gun!"

_Oh great, I'm dealing with more of those sanctimonious types._

Turning his gaze back to face Claire, Steve considered pulling the trigger. _She deserves it, she abandoned me._ But as the contemplation played out in his mind, the young operative started to weigh the consequences of his action. Imagining Chris and Leon hunting him and what remained of the H.C.F. like wolves, the Polis burned into a smoldering carcase of heated metal and scorched corpses.

_Plus no pay. Which would suck even more._

"Hmmm, quite the conundrum I have here." Steve told Claire, showing a face crossed between serious and a sarcastic grin. "Kill your friends, or don't kill them." Finally relenting control from the desire of his own grim machinations. "Screw it, the boss would probably be pissed if I did, anyway." Lowering his weapon away from Claire's face. "Not that I won't if they're more trouble than I can tolerate."

As his weapon recoiled from her, Claire retained her aim on Steve and then notices a spot of interest on his attire: the logo H.C.F. on his left sleeve. Seeing the look in her eyes after tracing her line of sight, the realization register's in Steve's mind _She remembers them_. Even if she failed to recognize him.

"You're one of Wesker's…" she uttered. Her words voicing the thoughts racing through her head, then Steve started to answer her incomplete sentence "Technically I'm-"

And then a "p-taff" bang, Redfield opened fire on him at point blank range. Shooting him once in the forehead.

Sending Steve fumbling one step backwards, reeling from the pain as he struggled to maintain his footing. Much to Claire's silent dread at the realization of the extent to how pointless her own action were, joined by her friends' combined terror as Steve shaked his head from shoulder to shoulder in the cycles with the hole in his head starting to seal itself back shut.

Leaving a veil of skin and bone to once again cover the hole.

Angrily rubbing the throbbing veil of skin where the gunshot had once been, Steve yelled at her "Ow! What the hell is wrong with you!?" feeling his eyes starting to glow. Adding his fury to a list of fact to encourage their continued fear of him. "I mean, who the fuck just shoots someone in the face like that? For no reason."

"Uh...me. I just did, actually."

"Well no shit, Sherlock!"

The wound Claire's gun inflicted on Steve's complexion was no longer a physical issue, but the pain as a whole retained its ability to project the memory of unpleasant agony for several seconds before Steve could finally think and see clearly once more. Rubbing over the surface in a mild attempt to massage the painful irritate away.

Looking back into her eyes, with a more intense expression of fury in his than before, Steve again wanted to kill Claire. That time with a more substantial reason, but again restrained his hand. "You had one free pass for pissing me off— _that_ was it. Do anything else stupid and I'll use you friends as target practice. Just to make a point. Again and again."

"What do you want, last I heard your boss is dead. Shouldn't you be collecting money, or beating someone up?" Claire joked, keeping her sidearm trained on the same spot where her previous mark hit before.

"For the record we don't need Wesker to still operate, and also: _Shut up_. I'm already hard pressed for reasons to not kill you right now—and, given your propensity for pissing guys like me off with a few words, I suggest you atleast try not to, cause, believe me, you won't like how I respond."

"Well aren't you a salty one." She continued to joke and tease at him, maintaining a hostile demeanor while continuing her witty retorts.

_Salty, me…? No...never._

Soon a voice suggested to Claire "Shoot him again, Redfield, maybe he'll die this time." with one of her more aggressive associates priming his rifle to fire on Steve. Steve in turn smiled in response—a kind of wicked smile that would give the gazers nightmares and disturbing images of what he was contemplating to do with them—and tells the hyper aggro male "Take your best shot, captain america. I do so love killing self-righteous pricks like yourself."

"What did you call me—"

Finally having tolerated more testosterone aggression than she could stand, Claire enters the conversation. "Enough, Jackson. You're not helping."

"But he—"

"Christ, do you ever shut the hell up?" Steve cut back in. "I mean, seriously. You have a death squad of soldiers hunting for you— in a city overrun with zombies— and you want to get caught up in alpha male bullshit."

"Don't you start now. We're not doing anything until we get some answers. Who are you and why are you here?"

_What the hell, not like we have anything important to do._

Beginning with a lie "My name is Zed. Zed Todd." and then making a bored sigh, Steve elaborates. "An old friend of mine, and yours, Damien, he hired me to help evacuate what was left of the population in this hellmouth."

"Damien Snow...? He's here, with you and a team."

"Yeah, the same. Though he's with what's left of the team. You following any of this, or am I speaking too fast?"

"No, I understand you perfectly. But tell me something...Zed: why would Damien be involved in this? Usually the marines or the B.S.A.A. are involved in this kind of epidemic."

"Because...reasons, and all that other typical bullshit. Jill wasn't very specific in explaining the details—just that some political douchebag was making a case that your brother is emotionally compromised or that he and his little circus can't be trusted to focus on combating the biohazard and keeping you under a low priority."

"So they deployed Snow instead? To contain the outbreak."

"Hell no," he almost laughed."Are you nuts?" The thought of her implication was so ludicrous it was almost hilarious. "An outbreak like _this_ requires a army of professional soldiers, not a ragtag cadre of operative rejects. No. We're here to evacuate what's left of the population, although I suspect it was more specifically for you, before the person in-charge decides to push the button to either glass this small town or level it."

"So it's just another Raccoon City?"

Steve shrugged his shoulders, making an indifferent expression in his grin. "Maybe, maybe not. Don't know and I don't care, to be perfectly honest." He never understood why the world was so fixated on _that_ day, when an entire town went to hell. It wasn't the first outbreak to occur and there would be others like it in the future—the only significance was the survivors and they were not of greater values than the hundreds to die in the city limits by Steve's perspective, beyond their will to survive and the skills which they implemented to do so.

"It isn't right…"

_Right, wrong; none of it really matters. Dad would call me a nihilist, a passive nihilist at that, but all lives seem to have seldom value in the grand scheme of this cruel, cruel world of ours. Where life fucking sucks and the weak suffer on a daily basis._

Continuing to shrug off the weak argument of morality in Claire's words, Steve replied "Noted. Now that we finished with this tedious Q-and-A of ours, can we ditch this shit hole. Unless you want to become a manwich for the brotherhood of-"

A loud crackling blast followed by the crumbling of rocky objects erupted from one of the neighboring buildings in the vicinity, disturbing Steve's focus. "What the fuck was that...?" Hearing the noises grow louder from higher altitude than before. Returning his attention back to Claire's cadre, he questioned them on the sounds "What'd you do, piss off the latest Nemesis?" while the outbursts of the outdoor rampage continued to persevere—each sound to follow snowballing in contrast to the echo of noise to burst out previously.

Sharing glances with her friends, Claire answered to him "More like a reject from the first Jeepers Creepers film." while pressing her free hand on the handle of her Browning in anticipation.

Pondering over her response, Steve said "I'm not sure what's more scary about that statement: the monster or the fact they actually have a movie out there with that for a title?" before the final crash.

"Oh what now?"

A monstrous hand soon answered his question, pushing forward against his chest, throwing him against the wall. Dropping his gun in the process, with the last thought of _Oh, fuck me,_ as the breath was pummeled from the lungs. Glimpsing the same repulsive image of the intruder from Arkham, still dressed in its tattered coat, staring back into his eyes with the demonic glare unlike those in Steve and Wesker's.

Beating his fists against the modern Goliath's grip, Steve struggled to free himself as Claire opened fire on the Tyrant's unguard back before her attention—and the focus of her group—shifted when a pack of cerberus zombie-hounds became the new paradigm, guided to the sight by the allure of the blood left in the creeper's wake of destruction in the streets.

Steve was strong and fast, and could dispatch a squad of soldiers on his own, but this juggernaut was different; stronger than any of the B.O.W.'s Wesker tasked him to destroy in the past, or any encountered during his adventures after Africa; and, perhaps, even too great a enemy to defeat through Burnside's conventional means of a bullet in the brain and stabbing.

Struggling to persevere, it was only through indomitable will Steve managed to retain consciousness. While losing his breath and strength, as his punches in the staggering time devolved into a hand patting on the grip similar to the old 'tap out' while jokingly muttering uncle, again he heard the articulate voice of malevolence from antarctica. "Fancy meeting you here, merc."

 _Oh, just perfect._ As if the situation was not a certified clusterfuck with Redfield's tense friends, but as with Steve's luck in the past, the situation escalated further on him. "Well if it isn't the Jeepers Creepers reject." Hearing the voice of Damien in his ear and, through his heightened hearing, the trampling of boots down the street.

"Zero, change of plans, we're converging on your position."

Smiling, Steve realized while his eyes gazed from the creeper to Claire's team fighting the zombie dogs that he only needed to endure.

"This amuses you?" The Creeper asked. Expecting fear and desperation as he had witnessed in his prey of the past.

Smirking in response, Steve told him "Something like that."

"We'll have to change that," Following through with its promise, the creeper punctured one finger into Steve forearm. He struggled to pull it out, seeing both his own blood and black substance ooze out from the wound, "Let's see if you're as amusing as Evelin," Upon removing the sharp point, some still remained within his arm as the wound healed. Desperately trying to remove the substance before his wound healed and only the veil of his skin and the ink of his tattoo remained and returned to its normal state. Shielding the substance from Steve's gaze and placing the bile beyond his reach.

Hearing the final step of boots at the doorway, it was time to act.

"Hey!" Damien interrupted, opening fire with his team on the creeper.

Even by serendipity, Steve's friend always manages to ease some burdens for him. Despite whether Burnside wished him to do so or to allowed to suffer through a problem on his own.

The bullets penetrating the B.O.W.'s back distracting long enough for Steve to reach for the cross guard sheath on the front of his waist. Stabbing into the dark scales of the monster's broad chest, causing more of the black ooze which had been in his arm to secrete as he cut down to create an opening—seizing the opportunity, Steve followed up by grabbing a cluster of grenades in his free hand and then plunging them into the exposed wound. Retracting his hand as the creeper's injury healed itself.

Infuriating The Creeper further, enduring through the pain to raise Steve up by the neck. Bring them to equal head level. At a mental crossroad of both fear and amusement, Zero settled his nerves to calm as he facetiously asked the towering juggernaut "How you doin'?"

Reacting repulsed, as the last resemblance of patience exiled itself from the face of frankenstein's monster, Creeper hurled Steve across the room. Failing to relief the smile still remaining on the operative's face.

"What are you grinning about?"

Lifting himself from the tiled pavement, Steve opened his left fist. Exposing five ringed pins to grenades...grenades which were likely to be near the moment of exploding, if it had to surmise...the realization morphed the physical features carved in the creeper's demonic face. The terror to overcome Arkham's devil was nearly invaluable as he explained to his stalker "Ka-Boom," smirking as his eyes glowed admiring the small explosion to follow—consuming the Creeper in a small ball of fire and shrapnel. Nothing as exuberant as to what he would see when reading the comics in high school, but still astonishing, all the same.

Leaving only shards of burnt metal and the lower half of the Tyrant in the wake of his fireworks. _Thankfully healing factors can't replace limbs. Guess limits are good for some things after all._ With the remains of the monster's fedora resting by his feet.

Admiring his own handywork, Steve rested on his back as Damien and his team assisted Claire's people with dispatching the remainder of hellhounds lurking in the room—oblivious or ignorant that their master was dead and half of a burning carcass—scaring away the creations as Steve gradually regained his strength while listening to the ringing blasts of gunfire. Feeling the black bile, which The Creeper had used to infect his arm, continuing to circulate from his limb through his arteries and the rest of his systems. Strangely enough, though, Steve felt normal. _Guess my antibodies can hold up better than I thought…_

"Zero…?" Damien's voice called out. "Zero, you hearing me or what?" Jarring him back from the misty lands of his own thought in which he had become lost. Pulling himself out and stepping up with a knee balancing, Steve replied "Yeah, I'm hard to kill; not deaf." Taking one hand offering to help him stand.

"Yeah, yeah…"

The hellhounds were dead and the zombies nowhere in sight for miles from what Damien and his team had told him as Jill surveyed over the bodies to confirm all the hostile beings were dead. Steve should have felt great, his work in Bastion was almost concluded, but instead he felt sick.

_Or...maybe not._

"Damien…?" Claire said, sounding almost genuinely surprised with the utmost disbelief. Muttering to Steve "Great, this bit." before turning around to face Redfield "Claire, how are you doing? Besides being in another outbreak."

"It's not like I bring the undead with me."

"Un-huh…" Damien started to prepare a remark and then quickly sees a change in her demeanor, and in the demeanor of her small cadre of survivors. "What is it?" Aligning their gazes with his, he found himself looking in Steve's general direction—his eyes once again burning a golden glow in resembling a cat's, with a more seething intensity than before.

Claire then answered Damien's question "Your friend is."

Steve placed a hand over half of his face, covering the left eye to remedy the sudden illness afflicting his depth perception. Beginning to see three separate Damien's and Claire's at once.

"He doesn't look so good, Snow."

"I still think we should kill him." Jackson opened up, uneasily, still hostile towards Steve, before Damien responded "Well I don't recall asking for your opinion, dingus." "What did you just say to me?" "I said back the fuck up before I slice you a new one." Then Claire pulled Jackson back to calm him down before Damien tried to assure her "Zero's not the problem here, and we won't have one for long."

But Steve did not see Claire Redfield any further. In the younger Redfield's place was the physical associate of his oldest fear: Alexia Ashford, and her brother Alfred at her side, both back from the grave. _Back from hell._

Pulling out one of his weapons, not yet prepared to aim down the sight, Steve yelled to Damien "Snow, back away from those things!" Burnside was uncertain if what he was witnessing was for real, he only saw the two monsters whom helped arranged the circumstances for Wesker to make him into one as well next to his friend—and he sure as hell was not going to afford them the opportunity to do the same to Damien.

Claire never had the time to raise her browning, the swiftness to which he primed his weapon for her person robbed her from the chance to do so with his own inhuman speed. Jackson had remained tense throughout the exchange, since the moment this stranger arrived to their hideout, and when Steve readied his weapon he saw his excuse to finally kill the Tyrant-humanoid—raising his rifle to shoot Steve in the face, still living under the delusion his weapon could end the operative's life.

He never had a chance.

Steve fired a single shot into the center of his throat, replacing his adam's apple(the laryngeal) with a hole gushing out blood. Dodging the bullet intended for his own head in the process before discharging his own bullets. Sending the basitch to the floor, struggling with his own mortality to breath. _Not nearly as satisfying as I remember._

"Jackson!" Claire cried out in horror, forgetting about Steve as she fell to her knees on the ground. Pressing down on the wound, tears in her eyes, as she suffered through the moment to save him with no success. Musing over the sight, Steve tilted his head—admiring Alexia's suffering. "Oh poor, Alfred…" He started, taunting at the woman who ruined his life "How many time do you think he has to die before it's permanent? Alexia, I'm asking you a question here." Garnering both revulsion and surprise from Claire through the mist of his hallucination.

"Alfred…?Alexia…?" Claire began to repeat certain aspects of his words. Perplexed by what Zed was calling her, two names which she had not heard spoken out loud in a decade. "You knew them? You're from Rockfort."

"Ding! Ding! Give the psycho bitch a prize, she finally figured it out."

Even if he hated Claire, his reaction to her suffering told Damien all he needed to recognize what happened to his friend. He was seeing someone who was not there in the place of Claire. "Zero, that's not Ashford. She's been dead for almost ten years. That's Claire, and you just killed her friend."

Failing to register his words initially, Damien heard Steve repeat his words. "Claire?" before starting to wash a hand over his face "That's right. I killed the Earl already, and Redfield's brother killed this bitch too." Steve feeling his blood burn through a parasite in the reddish streams of his veins to the last molecule. "Then how...did...I just…? Oh. fuck. Me." Finally seeing the truth as the last of The Creeper's toxin was purged from his body and mind. Seeing Alexia and Alfred no longer, and instead only Claire with a dead Jackson in her arms. His neck perforated at the center. _What have I done_. Finding himself once again with blood figuratively on his hands, just like the typical tedious cliche.

His eyes started to wane from their intense, burning golden glow.

Speechless, literally, Steve stared down at his victim—Jackson was a insufferable, self-righteous, sanctimonious asshole but Steve did not want to kill him. It wasn't guilt— _this feeling_ to wash over him—guilt required intent, and what Steve did happened when he was not himself. _At best, this was momentary lack of judgement_.

Meeting the confused state of Claire's gaze, Steve started "I…I mean...I didn't..." flabbergasted for the words to avoid her turning against him and maybe convincing team he was the problem. Then "Aww," a mocking exclamation of sadness echoed from a intercom "I bet Grendel twenty quid you'd actually shoot Redfield." A voice more cruel than Steve while still believing Claire had been Alexia. Looking up towards the intercom's position—in a corner where the wall and roof joined—Steve for a brief moment thought he recognized the tone of their host to the outbreak to claim Bastion.

"That voice…?" Damien joined at Steve's left side. Asking "You know it, too?" Both men wanting to shoot out the annoying voice in the box.

"Oh come now, Damien, Do you really not recognize me? I expected it from Wesker's favorite pet, but that's just cold coming from you..." He hated Steve, but appeared to be in a less negative opinion of Snow; as if the two had a brief encounter insignificant to Damien and vastly the opposite to the mysterious figure. Then Steve thought _Pet…?_

Wesker never referred to Steve as a pet, or a thing—not directly to his face—nor did Excella. But the term often was gifted to him by another. An operative, of sorts...

"Ajax!" Steve barked at the voice. Washed in a mixture of emotion as the realization gradually slathered through his mind with a plethora of thoughts and speculations. "The washed out, discarded operative who always thought he could."

The man, Ajax, laughed. "Zero, it's been too long, mate. But then again, who has time for a failure experiment?" Unfazed by the sound of his former associate. "Or do you prefer to be called Zed, now? Zed Todd."

Furious "Ajax, you son of a bitch!" Damien cursed at the man through the intercom—apathetic towards the possibility his words were not registering to the orchestrator of this latest biohazard the group found themselves standing at the center of.

"Oh! So you do remember me. And, apparently you've met my mother."

Listening to the conversation, Claire rested Jackson's body on the tiled floor of the building—the expression of pain and terror still fresh on his lifeless remains and blood still visible in the open cavern of his mouth—before rising to one knee. Asking "You know him?"

"That's one way to interpret it..." Jill answer for the two men. "He was more like a rival for Zero. Before he fell out of favor with Wesker."

"Mrs. Valentine…" gleefully, Ajax clapped his hands—Steve could faintly hear the applause through the intercom. Feigning fond memories of the past "I can not tell you how lovely it is to hear your voice again..." and, although not physically present, both Claire and Damien could not resist to notice Jill acting as if her skin was starting to crawl out of place at the sound of Ajax's voice. "Not as enjoyable as when you screamed. When we began our work with P30."

Steve did not turn to see the expression on Jill's face, he knew more than any of the group what she must be feeling. Or he can at least partially understand how those memories can affect her—fully capable to recall all the times this sadist used the scarab shaped P30 to maximum effect on Jill during the earliest days of her time in the H.C.F.'s care, ravaging her body with agonized screams as the shocks pieced into her through the device and its wires rooted inside her chest as she struggled against the effects. Finally stopping the tortuous conversation "Speaking of screams…" Ajax interfered for a moment, tell Steve "You know you loved it, Zero. Listening as I made her scream. And that suit of her's..." Steve continued, regardless "Where are you, Ajax? I wanna have a little chat face-to-face. About the old times…and all that." smiling wickedly into the lense of a camera which still remained operational "Resolve some issues on my way out."

"No, no, no…" ever the sadistic ass, Ajax responded "I was planning on paying you and that wreckage of a Polis you call home a visit, eventually. Just not today. Guess we know why you're a soldier of fortune."

Tugging on his shoulder, Jill urged to Steve "Forget about him," and pulled up her PDA to show a timer. They only had five hours remaining. "Remember. We have a helo to catch." Looking towards the monitor with a hate filled stare for the man. "We can hunt this animal on another day."

Aiming the barrel of his samurai edge for the observation device, Steve responds "Works for me." Shooting out Ajax's eye in the room, interrupting as Ajax mocked "Daddy must be so proud. Oh wait…?" then Steve destroyed the intercom. "I don't feel like being hit by a airstrike from the military." Turning his gaze back towards his latest victim. "Much!"

Unsure of her stance toward Snow's team—especially Zed—as Steve continued to look down at Jackson's body. Seeing not remorse, but bitter sadness. He hated Jackson, but...he did not want to kill him. The sight was almost as sad as losing her friend to blood loss. Forcing her concerns for what happened to him aside, at the moment, for the survival of her people to still remain, Claire inquired to Damien "How are we going to get out of his hellmouth?"

"A pilot..." Damien answered. Reloading his tactical RONI "of the aircraft variety." before putting a finger on his ear piece. "Assuming more of those wendigos don't get a bite of us first." Then turned to away from them, focusing mentally on the static to populate the connection each member of the team shares on their communicators. "Huntsman to Sea King, we've recovered what remains of the survivors and ready for extraction. Do you copy, Nimbus?"

(Static continued)

Buzzing hisses echoed into all their ears, like the Slender Man, himself, was nearby in Something Awful. Reminding Steve of the greatest dread in his memory—while waiting to know _what in the name of god_ is happening both on the Umbrella parody of Devil's Island and again, later, in Wesker's main base at the time.

"Nimbus, do you copy?" Jill called out. Then Damien barked "Kenny! Copy, God Damn it!" starting to suspect the pilot was either unable to hear them, or was ignoring them as a joke—letting them scare themselves. He was worried, Damien was really worried. Anger is how he sometimes expresses it.

Steve all the while waiting, assuming the worst scenarios in his mind; the survivors huddling together behind Claire in fear for the next beast to come. Gawking over her shoulder into his normal eyes, and then back down to the floor and their weapons. Children by their sides, robbed of the wide-eyes found in the stage when humans retain innocence.

"Lower your voice, Snow…" The Nimbus finally responded. Possessing the accent of a suburban american—like the inhabitant of a real world Gotham. "Some bad weather's pulling in on the area, interferin' with my equipment something bad."

"But you can still pick us up, right?" One of the men Damien hired asked. "Cause I sure as hell do not want to spend a full night in this down."

"Of course I can," Kenny reassured him "I will. Once I'm over the rendezvous zone you need to get aboard or I WILL leave you here." Causing the team to seeth in anxiety at the thought of becoming forsaken—left to die from with blood loss or bogs and bullets. A thought and sentiment Steve did not relish.

"We will." Jill responded, watching with Claire as Steve motioned himself to a crack of space in the boarded windows. Then Kenny retorted before reengaging radio silence "Be sure that you do, Jill, a storm's coming. And I mean that literally."

Looking over, Damien told the group "We're going to hold up in the church to the east." Turning to Steve to explain "20 klicks from here." then turned back to their party "Nimbus will land in a hour or two, at most; then we escape..." Soon after his words trailed off as Steve became lost inside his mind. The exact number of time a occasion like this has occurred to him felt tired. Before Steve he felt the fingers tiny finger carrot hand tugging on his wrist, looking downwards to see one of the children. "Your friends are leaving."

Recognizing the boy was right, Steve looked back into the clouds as the kid returned to the side of his group after "Jesse, get back here…" Telling himself "Helluva night we have." as the boy paced over to resume his place. A storm was in the making, just like the pilot said. Steve could see the details to betray the weather's future as the first drops started to form, falling from the sky. Drenching the abandoned cars and corpses of cannibals in water as they prepared to leave.

"One hell of a night..."

**Reunion at Hellmouth Part 2: Revelations**

For a hour the small cadre of mercs and volunteer operatives remained on a constant stride with their new additions. Trekking through the abandoned streets bound with a destination for the ruins of Bastion's decimated buildings—destroyed either during The Creeper's rampage across the American town in its pursuit of Claire Redfield's cadre, or by the same individual who opened fire with a RPG on his Humvee—with Steve remaining at the rear of the group while on the trail. Not desiring to inadvertently instigate another standoff between himself and the survivors. _Not in the mood, I guess_.

Meanwhile Jill remained at the front, leading the direction as the pointman—or point woman, _in her case_ —and Claire maintained a position near the center her people, keeping her pistol primed in her grip while occasionally look over her shoulder behind them to Steve's general direction indecisively before returning her stare to the front and sides. _Probably waiting for the ideal excuse to shoot me again. Or just can't decide._

"Well—she's pissed." Damien joked. Marching beside his old friend for a majority of the time, before now breaking their mutual silence at first noticing one of the angry stares Claire blasted back towards Steve. Smirking, for the first time since killing Jackson, Steve replied "Really? I thought she gave the 'I hate you sooo much' stare to all the guys who piss her off."

"No. I mean, not like _that_...then again, you did shoot her friend."

 _Who cares?_ Wanting not to remember the sight of his victim, Steve asked "So what happens now? She going to turn you and the others against me and unloading all the remaining ammo on my skull, or was the team planning on just abandoning me here?"

Shrugging his shoulder Damien answered "No. Though you might want to keep your distance until she cools down. Or we reach the Depot."

Despondent from the entirety of his overall day, Steve sighed "Great…Just, fucking, great..." uncertain if he actually cared or was just developing his latest case of depression—or if Claire was the cause, through her presence rekindling the memories of his 'one bad day'—yearning for the moment when they were aboard the nimbus.

He was depressed. Years had transpired from their days on Rockfort Island as inmates; a decade, actually, since they escaped from the hellish prison and Damien could still read his friend, as people usually say in idiom, 'like a book' and the source of his supposed melancholy—a disease of the feelings both of the men were familiars—and one, to which, sympathize with.

Seeking to distract his friend, Damien remember some of the words exchanged in conversation with Ajax via the intercom and asked "So when did you start calling yourself Zed Todd? I don't remember hearing that one among your aliases."

"It wasn't," Steve wearingly clarified. Recognizing Snow painfully obvious attempt and choosing to humor him. "I made the damn thing up, back in the police station."

"Hmm… so were you a fan of hellblazer and red hood before or after Chris blew Wesker's head off? He never struck me as the type to permit his people luxuries like hobbies."

Snickering lowly, "Heh," Steve playfully responded "Fuck off, smart ass..." unable to recall why he was sad to begin with. "And, for the record, we could have hobbies. Just not let them interfere with our work. If we did, he'd kill 'em."

The survivors remained ignorant towards the conversation, as both Steve and Damien could see on differents episodes gazing forward, separately, through the trail to the Faust Church. _And I thought normal churches were bad,_ Steve reflected, examining the remains of a derelict house of god. Judging by the glance of age to the disrepair Steve had to assume no human beings had willingly visited this site since the Reagan administration. "Well...shit really must have hit the fan if we're resigned to wait here."

"Beats waiting out in open view. Unless you want to be the first thing the brain dead cannibals see when the sound of a soaring Helicopter lures them here."

"Right…" he agreed. Then Damien began to say "Besides, it's not like our conditions-" then Steve interrupted in mid-sentence. "Don't say it! Don't even joke about it. You'll jinx us." Steve considered to argue a counter-point, but the notion in his mind gradually became immoderate in his own judgement, and silently found himself a vacant spot unpopulated by the survivors—dwelling away from him as much as physically possible.

Later. Inside the church.

Pull, release;pull, release; pull, release; Steve continued with his tedious exercise on the chamber of his sidearm—distracting himself from volatile matters inside of the main spacious area of the church where the survivors were huddled like livestock in a cattle pen.

If he listened closely, Steve could occasionally eavesdrop, with his enhanced hearing, as the seldom few to outlast the whole of Bastion's populace coward in fear of what 'might' happen rather than for what 'could' transpire. Consumed by a paranoid frenzy while whispering to conspire against the man to murder their associate.

Steve killed Jackson, he killed hordes of zombies, and even killed the death squad hunting them; the operative could even murder the rest of them if he wanted—Steve threatened to do so. If they had a reason not to, none were willing to admit the fact outloud. "It's us or him…" one cried, before another voice among the survivalists (likely Claire) chastised the group and guided the majority of the opinion away from the hysteria. It was true though, Steve could. _Hail the king...of death_. If he wanted to, or need to; neither scenario, of course, currently a option with relevance at the time. Or appeal for Steve—if he wanted to senselessly slaughter a feckless group with no distinguishable marks of character, Burnside would have remained in the center of Bastion killing the infected at the heart of the biohazard.

Footsteps from inside the next room echoed closer to his position in the church, too light to be Damien or the other men. Waiting, Steve inserted a full magazine of hollow points into his pistol and then pulled the chamber back one final time; if they wanted a fight, Steve would gladly grant their wish.

"Hey Zed?" Claire stepped through the doorway, her sidearm holstered into place on her side, finding Steve waiting with Samurai Edge in his right hand but laying on his lap. Not primed to threaten her life, but obviously prepared for usage. "The gun necessary?"

"What? I'm not aiming it for anyone." Steve riposted, "Plus, you did shoot me once before, already."

"Just once. You were a part of that fiasco in Africa, and you worked for the monster who tried to kill my brother a multitude of times."

Reluctantly, Steve rested the sidearm, but refused to lower his guard. "I assume you wanted something."

"I do, actually." Claire retorted. "About something you mentioned earlier, when you were hallucinating." Finally, the question she had consciously persisted to subdue from escaping her lips each time they opened, before the restraints failed. "You were on the Island, right? Where Umbrella imprisoned people they didn't want running around free, but decided not to kill." Genuinely curious to his response, with both her sense of warm compassion and revulsion towards his many crimes obviously present in a equal duality.

"The very same..." Steve hesitated, "Before shit hit the fan when Wesker assaulted the island with those bombers of his." Equally curious to what she was leaning the conversation towards. "Why…?"

"I was a prisoner on Rockfort island, myself. Umbrella captured me after I broke into a facility of their's in Paris—three months after I escaped from Raccoon City—looking for my brother, Chris; while I was there, when the outbreak occurred, I worked with another survivor among the prisoners." Claire began to explain, less hesitant than him and lesser than before. _She's honest, at least, I'll give her that. Guess that's not as annoying as I thought._ It was almost funny how blissfully and tragically she was ignorantly conversing with the very same convict. "We weren't exactly on good terms at first, and ended up working together initially by circumstance before we escaped from the island prison—killing Alfred Ashford in the process—stealing a plane, we crashed near another Umbrella facility in Antarctica. He wasn't as lucky there, Alfred psycho of a twin found us and infected my friend with with her adapted strain of the T-virus…"

"The T-Veronica Virus." Steve finished her segment for her. Remembering every single detail all too well. Nodding her head, Claire says "Yes. My friend, his name was Steve Burnside. He fought her influence before he could kill me, but eventually died from injuries he sustained in the process."

 _Injuries, Yeah. That's one way to describe it_ , Steve could practically feel the pain return to him as the memory flashed back to when Alexia had one of her tentacles impale through his torso.

"Chris and I continued on to finish off Alexia, but while we were away Wesker nabbed Steve's corpse to obtain a sample of Veronica's virus lingering in his system…" finally reaching the final stage of her recount, Claire _did_ hesitate before forcing herself to say "He mentioned it was possible my friend, Steve, may be revived by the virus. Was it Plausible? Or was he just taunting me one last time to screw with Chris?"

A dubious Steve realized in place his desire for a response was split—unsure if telling the truth was wise, or if he should pass along a cruel lie. Nodding his face left and right, Steve answered as he made the response as he fumbled through the sentence "Possible...I suppose. I mean, the Veronica virus is inside of me with other viruses, and a piece of it is inside other H.C.F. operatives…-"

"But do you know, for a fact, if Steve Burnside is alive? With no trace of uncertainty."

"No…" Steve bluntly responded. "I don't."

Claire's facial expression morphed into brooding sadness, responding "Thank you, Todd. I appreciate the candor." before facing a new direction to walk away, showing genuine depression towards the continued uncertainty at this part of her past. For the first time since his revival, Steve felt his hatred for Claire Redfield wane. Only pity and regret. Resentment retained itself in the back of his mind—but the melancholy to emerge drowned out that emotion which had dominated his view of Claire for the past decade. His limbs quivered slightly, betraying the despair. For years that heartbreak and tears sired by Claire's supposed betrayal were concealed in his anger; for years Steve had forced himself to hate her. But now...all he wanted to do was cry for all those years wasted. Lost in hatred and violence.

The sentiment of emotion to overwhelm her face was infectious—Steve did not like it. He hated the melancholy and wished to relieve it. Again in his lonesome isolation, Steve reached into his pocket—pulling out a small syringe. It would be time for vaccination soon; to administer a injection of PG67A/W. _I just need to wait for the Nimbus to land._ When they were safe aboard helo and in the process of soaring beyond Ajax's reach. _If such a thing is possible, for now_. If any of his men still remained inside the greater area of the Bastion vicinity.

Soon, almost instantly after completing the thought, "Quite the gloomy woman, isn't she?" the voice of the interloper echoed through the earpiece connected closely to Steve's eardrum—an outsider listening in on Steve, waiting in obscurity for the opportunity to make his presence known to H.C.F. agent. "Then again, she is a tad of an upgrade over the previous types of women you've invited into your life."

Articulate and well spoken like The Creeper with words vocally uttered out loud. _Great...just freaking great_. _Another one of Ajax's cronies._ Steve suspected that Ajax possessed no actual desire to allow any individual to escape from this nightmare he had orchestrated, especially him, Damien and Jill. "Who is this?"

A pause of silence. Then, the sensual voice spoke. "A concerned member of the party currently trying to kill you and the feckless idiots you were sent to rescue." _I knew it. Half-right, anyways._ "And one of a few interested in removing Mr. Sionis from the equation."

"Oh, I see…" Steve hushed himself into a smile, realizing what this was. "A Judas, from a collective of Iscariots."

"No. We're more concerned his vendetta against you in-particular and a select few in your company have made him irrational. Contrary to what he has led you and your friends to believe, Ajax thoroughly plans to kill you. Every. Single. One." She explained before Steve inquired to her "So why are you divulging this information with me, Miss..." He stopped thinking of an alternate name, when she responded "Stella. My associate, Trent, and I are substantially more interested co-operating with you and Archangel rather than the defect Wesker rejected from his elitist club."

"Trent…?" Steve mumbled under his breath. The answer was less surprising from his point of view, recalling how unstable Ajax became after his body reacting to the virus—as one of seldom whose bodily system repelled most of the common abilities H.C.F. operatives developed and instead was deprived of many nerve ending, causing him to no longer feel pain or, for that matter, almost any emotion beyond hubris and the primal, base instinct of needs, Ajax was made by multiple far regards the most unreliable of allies to have. "Who's with him besides Grendel?"

"Grendel? Grendel is no longer among them. He was ordered to depart for our safe-house in Maine shortly before you arrived inside Bastion." Stella elaborated. "Aside from his personal squad, Ajax is the only competent player inside the red zone to pose a potent threat to your mission."

"And?"

"He's already converging on your position with the remainder of his forces. So I would suggest-" Stella was interrupted in mid-sentence. The latest of the many time during operations Steve found himself suffering this old hollywood cliche, as a blast from the side of church knocked him from his feet to the floor. Healing from his injuries as he recovered composure. Hearing her again "Do you understand?"

"Yeah, I got it. Thanks for the help. Really made a difference." Steve joked, as the connection was severed. Hearing as the crackling sound of wood planks dropping to the ground with broken pieces of brick register; Damien rised to his feet, with Jill running for cover behind the wall undisturbed by the erupting blast with the outburst "Get behind something." Hearing enough as combat boots marched towards the opening, discharging assault rifles to kill, Steve joined them.

The men and women responsible for the siege were dressed identically to the death squad Steve slaughtered inside the police station. Tactical armor and equipment; prepared for more direct combat as they raised their M4A1s and shotguns from behind the trees, rocks, and the remains of the less durable derelicts to survive the decay of time and gradual disrepair. Firing the one side-arm still primed from earlier for action; leading the counterattack against the militia grunts converging on the church, Steve proceeded to stab one in the side with his knife—dragging the weapon across the left side of the torso and allowing the man to bleed profusely in a slow death. Avoiding every round of lead bullets and discharged spray of the scatterguns, the Tyrant dispatched the group with ease—astounding Jill as she and Damien gradually found themselves not required to repel the invasion; the display reminding her of the abilities she witnessed at the hands of Wesker at the time when Valentine and Chris confronted the former S.T.A.R.S. captain at the Spencer estate in europe. Only...Steve failed to toy with the black ops soldiers as Wesker prefered to use his powers during his life after the mansion incident.

Distinctly, an echo of blades in the clouds alerted them; Damien looked back to his people with Jill—then the pair looked towards each other, and then back to Claire and Snow informed her. And to her group, "Time to go." Leading with Jill and Claire ahead of the fledglings through the warzone as Steve continued to flash through the field of combatants—eliminating some while other remainders of their comrades were behind cover to formulate a strategy, unaware they were seconds away from death.

Fanning blades circling over them, the glimpses of the helicopter distracted all attention away from the remains of the fight; averting eyes away from the carnage, as the zombies consumed the remains of soldiers dead and barely clinging to what life was their's, as the V-22 Osprey soared above—gradually descending toward the ground, with the door of the cockpit opening and a Checkmate agent ready for a fight with the small minigun spinning—preparing to open fire on the zombies—and other operative lowering themselves to the ground with harnesses on a rope.

The squad prepared their weapon the moment their boots touched the earthen soil beneath them—securing a decent zone of space for the Nimbus to land as the survivors rushed across the grass to meet them. And Snow disappearing from the notice of his troupe once they were among a more secure position with the human operatives.

Amidst the confusion and the toiling of his own task, Steve, himself, was at a loss for sense of direction—resigned to further perpetuate the blood and violence of the combat zone. Slaughtering enemy combatants when a canister dropped to the earth—closely planted near his feet—and then glass fumes sprayed to cover the proximity around him in smoke. _What the hell_. A figure emerged while he remained vulnerable to attack. "Good day, Zero!" Kicking Steve with his back to the ground, then blindsiding him once again with a fist before the figure became visible. Dressed in a green vest over a grey combat uniform, a man with short, buzz-cut blond hair snickered over Burnside; stealing the syringe and forcing Burnside into losing his grip over both his pistols as they fought.

Tossing the medication aside, Ajax reach for the rear of his pants—unsheathing a small, sharpened blade. Purged of dullness for this very occasion.

Lunging down towards the operative, Ajax jovially loomed over Steve—pressing down against the hilt of his knife while his rival struggled for control of the weapon on the second end. "You're dead, Burnside." he taunted. "The knife won't kill you, but it'll make dispatching you a helluva lot simpler! Finally. The 'great' Zero will be nothing more than a bad memory. Forgotten by all except his betters."

Through the endeavour to stab Steve, Ajax notices Burnside is not expressing relative concern or fear to the prospect in his words. The glee gradually dissipating from the sadist's face.

"Interesting plan you have there, fairly decent strategy to come from a deserter." Steve gloated upwards, keeping the sharpened point of the blade away with more than relative ease. "Tipping your knife with a substance to nullify my power, rendering my viruses useless."

Ajax began to ponder the meaning behind the words "What do you…?" before his face articulated towards alarm before Steve noticed as Damien appeared behind his attacker.

Then stab, Snow brings a syringe down into Ajax's back—the very same which Ajax previous stole and carelessly tossed aside—leaving the small injector sticking out from the back as he paced backwards exclaiming "Meaning he beat you, pompous ass prick!"

Fully in control of the weapon, Steve pushed Ajax away—the man too distracted by the agonizing pain at the moment—and rises to his feet. "Well that's one way to phrase it."

Jabbing at the syringe in his back, Ajax pulled the small sharp object to violate his skin from his back—tossing the emptied container of PG67A/W to his side before collapsing to the earth beneath his feet. Writhing in agony as his blood boiled and eyes turned sensitive to the sunlight with sharp stings feeling non-existing needles piercing the source of his gaze.

For Steve, the dosage of PG67A/W was cause for a brief state of dizziness and surge of pain, pleasure, and adrenaline—with the sensation of adrenaline rush outlasting the rest—but for Ajax it was a destructive agent towards his health.

_This is likely the first time, in, well, years, he's felt genuine pain. Steve imagined, Since the injections._

"You could have been so much more, could have been a man who stood for something—better than this—in the new future of our making, better than the last," Ajax started to grunt, "But you've a killer's heart now, and all the narrow minded vision that those bring to the other foolish cattle in the world." feeling the parasitic nature of his adversary's serum ravage his body with toxins and decimate the natural defenses of his immune system. "Nothing on you, still, but the blind mettle of a slave through all your blunders over the years."

Steve could not bear to look at him, showing only his back to the man, sickened by what he had become. "A damn sight better than you, right now, Sionis," finally the fire-glow of his gaze returned to meet with the dying in Ajax's. Trading the verbal wound with his own disparage "The Heart of a traitor," showing as little restraint possible in his contemptuous opinion towards his former ally "A self-righteous degenerate who believes himself better than those who called him friend—treated him as a brother...even through all your posturing."

"Yes, and proven it to myself time and time again to be the truth! What have you done since Uroboros, since Wesker's death? You and Caleb. Nothing but endless murder and mayhem, serving from one master to the next for the highest bidder."

Thrusting his arm downwards in a fist, Steve punched Ajax across the face; punching him _again_ ; and _again_ ; and _again_ ; gratuitously, and almost inexorable, _again_ as Damien watched—motionless and at a loss for control over his faculties while observing the relentless process of violence—and then Steve grabbed the operative by his throat. Screaming into his face "You threw in with the very people we hate. Who tried to kill us for years"

"No. They are different, I wish you could just see that. See that if you continue this path of your's—you'll find yourself walking to its end alone, with only the bodies left in your wake to still call you friend…"

Steve loosened his grip "Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but I can go into that grim future at least proud that their is one less snake in the garden." allowing Ajax to briefly suffer further, coughing and hacking out blood before impaling the man on his arm—just like Wesker taught him, and how his mentor executed his maker—and then snapping his neck upon realizing the first injury would fail to kill him. The pound of meat and bones quickly came to rest itself on the ground, left as a new meal for the infected horde alongside his militant acolytes. _It's better this way...a quick death is preferable to a slow death being eaten alive_. Taking one final glance, feeling neither satisfactory nor regret in the deed, Steve was disgusted with the man he once called his ally. _What a waste._ Forcing himself to not ponder what might have been... _had things turned out differently, if maybe Wesker never sent him away._ Such latent distractions and humanization of his enemies was against every aspect of what Steve had been taught under Wesker's tutelage.

For all his faults, there was a time _before his jealousy and ego consumed him_ that Steve would have considered making a friend out of Ajax—but that possibility was a lifetime ago, and beyond Burnside's help. Of salvation from his own self-destruction. _If the possibility was ever existed, or plausible._

Looking back to Damien, the pair ignoring the unpleasant scene to transpire seconds earlier, he was informed professionally by Snow "Time to go, Zed; we have a ride to catch." pointing with his index finger to the Nimbus docked, hovering an inch above the ground with Jill and one of the mercs, Nord, covering the survivors as they boarded. Steve nodded his head in agreement "You'll have no argument from me." following behind the soldier in the trail to board the V-22 with Jill retreating behind them inside as the helo started to ascend from the ground, briefly glimpsing the undead converging to consume their freshly prepared manwiches as the door raised up and sealed tightly shut. Briefly glimpsing the first bites of carnage as aerial objects past by them and jetted for the Bastion's direction.

 _All those people...,_ Steve thought. Then forced himself to tell those nagging thoughts to persist _They don't matter any more, their dead. Just like Damien's men outside Arkham, Bones and his guards, Jenkins and Jackson...and that stupid kid I used to know in Antarctica._ _Like the rest...just like all the rest of those left behind among the lost and dead._

**Epilogue**

Reflecting back on the mission, Steve thought _The ride home wasn't so bad, considering most of the plan went to hell in a handbasket._ Thinking of his conversation with Claire back inside the church—what she said about him. She never bothered herself to search for his body—to deviate away from the course of her activist life in TerraSave—but she also failed to forget about her friend.

Glimpsing down the row of seats, nearing the proximity of the pilot seat, Steve noticed Redfield relaxing—arching herself backwards against the chair with the survivors surrounding her. _Happy to be alive. Elated by the euphoric sensation of continued existence._

After hours—maybe, even possibly, days—of surviving on their own in the latest hell she entered, encouraging her fellows into believing they would be fine along the way, the ride inside the helo was the first moment of solace Claire experienced without the stress of the next monster around the corner or some other sudden horrifying intrusion which discontinued her peace of mind.

She has no idea he was watching her, not the slightest inkling of Steve's actions and motivations, while he and Damien rest at the end of the cockpit. The way he prefered, even in the aftermath of his own revelations.

Looking across, to a chair opposite of his own, he asked Snow "Are going to tell?" clarifying "When we land. Or does she have to learn on her own?" Gazing back, Damien responded "Unless you decide to: no." Shifting his body to the opposite direction of where the survivors were resting. "I'm the only one who know the truth, about you, anyways. For now!" Permitting Steve to some bijou means of relief and sustaining a feeling of secrecy.

"Good." _I don't know if I'll ever forgive her—if I can let go of my anger—still, maybe one day I can tell her the truth. Better that I'm the one she hears it from, anyways; possibly lessening the blow._ Steve could only imagine what her reaction would be: horror, disgust, surprise, joy. Any scenario was possible. "Let's try to keep it that way when we land."

"I can only speak for myself on that. At least you're still getting compensated for your efforts."

"Yeah, yeah..."

Carnage, bullets, a high body count, and a fellow H.C.F. operative dead; it was almost like the old days. Except... _I'm not the only soldier to return home_. There would be other matters to contend, with Trent and Stella, but they could wait for tomorrow. Now all Steve looked forward to was home.


	7. Interval 03: A New Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What now?

**Interval 03: A New Adventure**

Standing motionless, Steve watched the passing cryo-stasis pods rush upwards as the elevator platform descended in the Experiment Facility. Left in a temporary mental state of ennui as they waited...waiting for the circular platform to finally halt.

Tentatively placing fingers on her Black hair curled into a bob, checking for hairs out of place with the faint vibration of the golden bracelet on her left arm; Gionne watched the monitor, patiently gawking her eyes at the screen to display the floor level. Waiting to reach for their unwilling guest; while Wesker, stoically remaining still against the central pillar, watched Zero's inaction—whom remained without a hint of life on the motion downwards. Feigning the appearance of a human husk, either unaware of the world around him or willfully ignorant in contempt for the reality they share. A statute in appearance, with the pair of custom pistols holstered under his arm, remaining silent along the side of the other two grunts to accompany them on the errand—Grendel, gripping a lowered HK416 in his hands, and Cait O'Deorain—watching as more of the cryo-stasis pods containing further test subjects pass them upwards in flashes.

Watching hundreds of the containers pass, O'Deorain scoffed "Jesoehs Chrest," at the near infinite numbers in stock and then inquiring "'ow many o' dese do we have?" as she and Grendel gazed with flabbergasted expressions towards the sight. Much to Excella's irritation.

Standing on her end of the platform dressed in white short dress which reached down to her knees, connected from a ring on the backside to her neck, exposing ample glimpses of cleavage beneath her gold necklace; not dressed for the location of their work yet persisting with her duties regardless she persisted with her elitist demeanor. Excella Gionne made no secret of her opinion and intentions, voicing her thoughts with a haughty tone of superiority. "Far above your pay to be a concern."

Not allowing the time after her insulting tone continue another second without response, O'Deorain retorted "Care to be a tad specific, Gionne?"

"Nothing you could understand," Continuing with her attention to the computer, Excella changed her vocal focus "How do you tolerate this company of your's, Zero?"

To which, Steve replied "They're perfectly competent…for a rookie and anarchist" emotionally distant from their conversation at the moment. The two women possessed an inherent loathing for each other, Excella in particular was not fond of the Irish recruit—almost jealously offended by her presence. In the petty fight, Steve prefered to not become involved; he and Grendel neutral towards the conflict which did not concern them.

Enduring the remainder of time before Wesker informed the Cadre "We're here." as the platform beneath their feet halted. Leaving the merc trio focused on one stasis chamber. An individual whose face became visible from a small glassy shape to see through, a face Steve recognized almost instantaneously from a mission in europe—recalling her face vividly _The chick Wesker brought back from the Spencer Estate?_

The subject: Jill Valentine. Her brunette hair now having hints of pale blond strands and a pulsating light illuminated through the liquids of her Lazarus coffin, both side effects caused by the scarab shaped device resting over her chest.

Watching her float in the water, blissfully ignorant of her surroundings, Steve asked "She's the one we're here for?" with his words intended for Wesker but with his eyes focused on the BSAA agent so the cadre could have assumed it was directed for any of them present. As Grendel and the anarchist voiced confusion, Steve persisted in directing his sight on the chamber preserving the recovery—reflecting on his own personal memories, Valentine's current circumstances reminded Steve of his own experience in stasis when first stationed in Arkham. The flow of water against his skin, turning almost numb to the sensation of hot and cold temperatures, the tedious awareness of the subconscious forced into silence while drugged into unconsciousness. Ignorant to her own existence as she remained dormant.

"Yes, Zero." Wesker answered his operative. Pressing one of the buttons to the control panel. "Now! Let's proceed, shall we? We have a schedule to keep, after all." Causing the cryostasis pod to initiate preparations to open. With steam exhaling from the opening of intentional cracks in the container's design as the interior became gradually exposed.

Watching inside, the subject began to stir.

Her eyes beginning to twitch, reacting to the outer stimuli, Steve was the first to realize Valentine was gaining sentience amongst the water which covered her body inside the large pod. Panicking as she struggled to breathe. Pressing against the door, attempting to force the chamber's door open, Jill was in desperate need for a fresh supply. Her urgent requirements promptly gained as she collapsed on the floor.

Her eyes full of fear.

Steve could relate to her, remembering when he first emerged from cryostasis—alive but afraid and confused. A hazardous combination for a patient's mental state. Watching her coughing, gasping for more air as she gained a measure of ease to her mind, they were not expecting a fight; she was still sedated, unlike the other subjects, having only enough the willfulness to escape for air.

Kneeling down on one knee, Steve looked over their guest—the scarab device glowing on her chest and the lighting blurring her vision and prevent coherent sight to recognize Wesker. "Welcome back to the land of the living." while Wesker and Grendel closed the empty pod's hatch.

"No time to daly, Zero." Wesker instructed his protege. "Time to leave."

Nodding in agreement, Steve responded "Right." Reluctant to make eye contact with the BSAA agent for a second time. Before "Time to go," he pulled the agent over his shoulders. Silently happy that he was not forced into resorting to his guns.

**Steve's safe-house, Polis**

**June 25, 2010**

Reflecting on the past, Steve was silent in his seat of the safe-house, listening to noise screeching from the distant Heaven Saloon—a cantina and dance club where patrons in the Slum could freely make themselves drunk. Bitterly glancing over his empty shot glass, freshly made thus at the point in time in anticipation for the night's end. In self-reflection Steve often found a simple means of passing his time—contemplating on the occasions where his life could have transpired differently, had his choices been...of an alternate reasoning and resolution.

He didn't regret his life as a whole, only the moments which made him hollow inside. From the instance he returned to the living, Steve could never let go of the misery which proved to be extensively more prolonged than in death. Feeling his situation was less different than his time as a dead man returning to life...from the immobility of that fucking pod. Robbed of agency and his personal sense of free will, as if he was a puppet adhering to the machinations of his puppeteer.

_Dying is the easy part. Living—that's the difficult part. Which begs me the question: what's the hardest part in living? Existing...? Perhaps...it's when you finally realize that you're not, really. You never have been. None of us have been. That we are merely the stumbling masses….through both time and space._

_It almost feels ironic, Steve thought. Sentient only in these exact moments when you see what's gone. Standing in that fragile second—finally awake...alive...a-a-aware. AWARE that there is ALWAYS still one more FUCKING thing to lose. That...that's the hard part and not a damn thing can be done in the world to fix, to remedy the pain of that fear. All the while impotent as it will occur._

_Robbed of everything. Mom...Dad...and even a clean death...with the third absconded by one monster only for another to restore my life and fashion me into a new breed of monster; abomination of science and biology. I was better off dead._

Since the Bastion Op, Steve could not recall when the melancholy first gripped him, again—he has always, ALWAYS, experienced episodes of depression like the one gripping him now and he loathed each episode equally with contempt. He believed the interaction with Jill and micro revelation from the time around Claire provided the catalyst for the cacophony of self-loathing plaguing his mind in the present.

_Never should've said yes._

Nearly five complete months of smuggling supplies aboard a Elco-type PT boat and respective shootouts with the cartels and coast guard, and Steve could still not purge the thoughts from his mind. The only recommended treatment to arise in his many thoughts was a continued cycle of work to preoccupy his waking seconds in the day-to-day life—to become a workaholic. Continuing to work with this enigmatic group which Snow introduced Steve to, Blue Umbrella—a private military company—in a constant flow of labor.

A series of work which transpired with Steve finally returning a week prior to the night in which he was finding himself in a particularly miserable stupor.

Gazing dreamily, watching the remains of bourbon trickle downwards on the glass, Steve was in a daze—lost within an amalgamation of his own thoughts and memories, sourly reminiscing on his past. The kills, the destruction and burning of communities...bing reading comics and piles of junk food.

The shattered remains of a broken radio rested on the floor, with bullet holes in certain pieces of the hardware. Destroyed in a previous episode of Steve's anger—with only useless news pieces being advertised by the declining media outlets.

 _Jimbo Jefferson's late night talk show cancelled for declining viewer ratings...efforts by American armed forces are improving in regards to their conflicts with the B.O.W.s in the Middle East...another rain storm was brewing in one of many Arkansas towns...civil unrest in Africa caused over rumors of Majini sightings…Venezuela teetering the ways of socialism...but, overall, nothing related to me._ If someone who carries a vendetta against Steve, or Ajax had any surviving accomplice from his suicide stent, they had elected to remain silent like the government concerning events which ensued in Bastion.

_Securing my continued anonymity._

Wesker gawked from the corner of the room, by some unknown cliche means returned from beyond the grave, lurking in the shadows as the glow of his penetrated through the darkness; silently overlooking his protege in disappointment.

"How pitiful." Wesker, remaining like a spectre in the corner, lectured his pupil. "Look at yourself, Steve: wallowing in self pity and in the gutter."

"We're all in the gutter, Wesker." Steve retorted. "Now shut up and leave me be." Looking from the phantom to his bottle on the table. Then again back to Albert. "Don't you stand there and judge me!" Steve growled from his seat at the phantom. Enduring the glow of his mentor's cat-like eyes, Steve could tolerate his own suffering no more. Violently hurtling his glass across the room "I said Shut UP!"

"Steve?" a voice echoed into the room, with a silhouette to notice the broken pieces of hardware and shards of glass.

A pair of swords slung on his back and a small black and yellow mask in his hand, Steve immediately recognized Caleb. "Wilson?"

"Who're you talking to?"

"I wasn't; You might just be hearing things." Steve denied the concern. Jokingly, he retorted "Letting your imagination run wild, old boy?"

Frowning, Caleb retorted "I have enhanced hearing, smart ass."

Steve chuckled, silently conceding to his bluff.

Looming over his friend, Caleb asked after shrugging one shoulder "What's happening with you, Burnside?" Examining the room and contemplating recent events, the operative was at a loss for what to do with his friend. "You've been acting funny since Bastion."

"It's nothing." Steve mumbled, hiding the bitter expression in his lips. "I just want to be left alone... figure some shit out."

All to happen in the condemned community was a rescue operation, a simple task Caleb knew was not even a challenge for a skilled individual like Steve. Helping evacuate the population with Snow, Valentine...and...Then Caleb's eyes began to widen, having a moment where the figurative light bulb activates itself gradually, with cognizance aligning to pick apart the possibilities. "This bout of emo is about Redfield's little sister, isn't it?"

_Jackpot, el capitan._

Steve did not attempt to hide his reaction after Wilson correctly guessed the cause to the agent-for-hire's melancholy. "Kinda…" almost feeling a tear trickle out from the moist in his eye. "All those years I spent—wasted—holding this extraneous grudge. Hating Claire; believing she had abandoned me, that she...just let Wesker do this to me while she moved on with her life as if nothing happened." Steve thought he was going to burst into tears, as he felt the anger become joined with sadness. "I was right, back then, before I chose to believe him."

His thoughts returning to those moments when they tortured him, when Krauser and Wesker convinced him through torture.

Awkwardly standing silent, Caleb seats himself in a chair next to Steve as he told Burnside "I think we both knew some of the things Wesker told you were bull shit." Attempting to provide some solace to his friend's grief. "We just happened to have grade-A convincing bluffers."

"I knew it was a lie and I STILL went along with it." Steve admitted. For the first time, not only to Caleb, but to himself. "I wanted someone to blame, alive, to project my hate and they convinced me where to channel it."

Placing a hand on his shoulder, Archangel told Zero "I know it hurts, Steve, but punishing yourself like this won't change anything. Sitting in the dark, wondering how things COULD have been, won't heal your wounds. Only waste time."

He seemed to understand Wilson's words, so he backed off. "Snow is still on vacation in Dulvey; maybe you should take one, yourself?"

"I'll think about it, Caleb."

Wilson left him alone afterwards. Once again away with Steve Burnside left to his own machinations as he contemplated on a venture of his own. "I just might." Looking to a corner of his room where his holstered Berettas were dangling from a coat hanger. "Fuck it, got nothing better to do."

**August 19, 2010**

Country and rock music blasting at high volume; young punks swaggering around with a false sense of entitlement and blind confidence in a successful future ahead; and adults slaving away on construction, paperwork and physical labors...Steve could only reflect _good ol' USA never changes much, I suppose,_ through the months while traveling through his old stomping ground. Enjoying glimpses of the former sights and sounds from a lifetime ago.

If any of his associates in Polis or Damien or old enemies were interested in his location, for the sake of a new task or retribution for any of his past indiscretions, entities remained silent and were not allowing their presence to become known. Bereaved of loved ones and lacking concerns, he continued with the journey; driving through the American southwest in a black dodge challenger with hours of the day wasted pondering how his destination would transpire...only for an explosion to abruptly erupt, intercepting his journey in dangerously close proximity on the road before feeling a pair of hands gripping his ankles and wrists.

_Everything hurts. The slightest twitch caused a sting to flux throughout limbs, and even an inkling in the spine, to a point even the thought of moving caused intense discomfort. So...when my captors reached the point in which they felt secure enough to release their grip before preparing their escape and dropping me on the hard gravily and lumpy pebble bumps on the asphalt—it was an extreme equivalent of falling from the second floor of my old high school. Pain discharged in a surge through my spine to the arms, legs and head with a sensation of discomfort so intense I longed for my first death._

_The suffering would pass in what felt like...I imagine what is three months recovering in a burn ward. Briefly feeling a syringe inject into my neck, the pain was made numb with a majority of my body as the modified sedative inoculated my body and weakened my own variant of the Wesker virus. When, finally, I gained the courage to open my eyes the brave cowards were retreating to recover their van as a third individual loomed over me. A young man with auburn stubbles._

"Christ, anyone ever say you look like hammered shit?" Quickly joined with an older figure, dressed in black ops military attire and a red beret over his head. _It can't be..._ Peering into the higher ranked grunt's eyes, it was almost impossible for him to be another man. Fighting to move with a faint sense of pain still prevalent, Steve muttered "Krauser…" before his captors returned—phasing through the observers.

As they began to lug his body away, Steve only managed to hear Jack say distantly "Enough small talk, Zero. Load the cargo on the helo." and his boots marching away as Burnside was loaded into a van.

**Later**

**Where? Who cares…?**

Closing his eyes, Steve could still feel the road bumps. Retreating into sleep to still see Krauser looking over him in disapproval; staring out in astonishment at a vast obstacle course before the instructor alarmed them "Go! Go! Go!" causing the flock to run at an instantaneous haste; Watching as a menagerie of troops passed; peering his eye through a scope before leaving a pool of red splattered in the lifeless dirt; a haughty feminine voice with a faint aristocratic Italian accent "You are puppet who just happens to possess an awareness of his own strings. Intelligent enough to know what he wants and having an impressive ambition, and handsome enough like your master. Come now, silly boy, the proceedings were arduous. The facade of professionalism can resume tomorrow. Why not enjoy each other's company?" before feeling the touch of her luscious lips as the model beauty pressed herself intimately. Resting in bed listening as the industrial entrepreneur of bio-organics whispered the mantra that had once been his abandoned and declining sense of a moral compass when other, more foreign, voices jarred his attention to the outside realm of his own subconscious from the shadows of the walls which cealed him inside with the bedfellow.

Venturing away from the sphere of his old life, Steve was greeted by the interior of a loft room as he adjusted to the lights beaming over him; hearing a feminine "Still passed out, the crash must have put him into some kind of coma." He looked over to see a raven haired woman his age laying on a second bed, balancing one leg on the other's knee—glancing up towards it and the ceiling as she spoke into the phone. "We can still move him back-" Then she noticed, glancing his faint movement in the corner of her eyes, that Steve was awake then rectified her error. "Never mind. He's up."

**October 2nd, 2010**

Everything hurt: his arms, legs, neck, somehow his crotch, and even his spine ached still from the 'accident.' But to Steve's relief no further attempts on his life transpired. His assailants having become silent and covering their tracks well.

Reprisal—not a concern.

Damien assuring him they would be no future inconvenience. Thus one less issue to laden Burnside and restrain his travel. Though, instigating the paranoid side of the operative, and costing more days than initially anticipated, as he took alternative routes to Old Haven.

Parking the camper from sight, Steve traveled the small distance remaining on foot. With nightfall being seconds an hour earlier, only kids were having the chance of noticing him, visibility was less than minimal.

 _Not much has changed...mostly_ , Steve thought to himself stepping along the empty walkway with a jet black jacket to conceal his weapons. Fascinated by how little the neighborhood had evolved.

Quiet. A majority of Old Haven's streets and roads were silent like a graveyard, with the exception of low commotion from inside the homes and children playing down the road. Walking further down the darkened parts of the area and desolate paths to reach the house on Franklin Boulevard, the next to the last of homes to remain where a community once existed—further away from the others in a part of the area which failed to be developed.

The fences had suffered a great deal of degradation, the grass had grown to large heights expected on a farm before the lawnmower cut down the skinny tall green giants, and the mailbox was smashed beyond recognition.

Walking up to the derelict door Steve could barely recognize the family name of the abode engraved near the door in faded letters: Burnside. The door's lock was easy to pick.

_Home...I'm home._

Stepping through and closing the door abruptly Steve felt bitter joy at the sights, then he saw the blood stains in the carpet. His eyes began to twitch, lips quivering in anger and emotional instability, and hands shook then clenched into fists. Remembering the day clear as water— _the door was forced open...dad and me were forced to the floor...then those bastards turned their guns on mom and...bang._

Tears trickled down his face as Steve remembered that night, the first time in a decade since he left Arkham. Then proceeded to slog his feet across the floor, pressing his back against the wall. Sliding down to the floor he seated himself.

Years ago this room was full of furniture and belongings. Gazing across the room Steve could almost see a phantasm of the TV, the shelves where their books were stored, and his dad on a chair yelling at the screen as his favorite team was losing. And his mother looking over to her son with a warm smile, standing over the blood stains.

Then all disappeared.

_This is what happens, eventually. Everything we have, all the people in our lives, will be gone. All that remains are the memories._

"Guess there's a reason to never go home again."

**Steve's Dream**

**Rockfort Island**

**1998**

It had been a long day for Steve, sitting on his bottom bunk and looking over his hand of poker cards, and his father away on other work; passing time with some of the fellow inmates.

Believing his was the best, Burnside placed his hand down "I'm calling. Straight." Showing his 7, 8, 9, 10 and joker.

Another inmate placed his down, "Two pairs." Damien was lacking in enthusiasm as he did so, then another placed his with them "Four of a kind."

"Guess I win." Johnson was pretty full of himself at the supposed win when the fourth man placed his down from a top bunk "No. I win." Putting a straight flush down.

"You cheated! That's the third time now."

Putting up his hands and smiling, Rex retorted "How?! I don't have any sleeves." Looking down from the bunk with his amber eyes. "And Snow has won two games. And Burnside had a win in the previous game."

"Yeah, but-"

A helicopter flying overhead outside interrupted the bickering. The sound of marching boots stomping through the dirt echoed nearby as the propeller's sound died. All the while the guards remain at their posts, ignoring them as if it was a part of the norm.

This was their sad reality...sad mainly in how irrefutable it had become.

"More people leaving?"

"Wonder if they're evacuating."

Leaning back in his bunk, Damien sniedly remarked, "If they were don't you think we'd all have been executed by now?" Dashing the hopes of the few inmates still clinging to the delusion of escape.

Leaning forward, Steve wondered out loud "What'd you suppose their leaving for, Damien?"

"Apparently they're deploying to the midwest. Something about an outbreak...or was it a biohazard?...anyway, they're leaving to clean up a mess of sorts."

"Midwest?" Rex asked. "Isn't that where your from, Burnside?"

"No. You're thinking of the southwest, Rex."

"Right, right." Rex was not as pessimistic as the rest. Among all the inmates he seemed to still have spirit uncrushed by the internment camp; a kind of hope which was more realistic than the others they could easily dismiss as delusion. "If we could get out of here, do ya think you would go home?"

"Not really. Even if I _could_ , what would be the point?"

"Closure, maybe."

Smirking at the idea, Damien remarked "Yeah. And maybe ol' Uncle Sam will liberate and treat us to a buffet of seafood."

"Would you go home, Snow?"

"If I could, in a heartbeat. Then come back with my other brothers and a small army of former rangers and marines." Then Damien added "But leave the closure bit out of my fantasy outcome."

Leaning back in his own bed, against the wall, Steve was silent. Musing over the idea. "Heh...closure, huh?" Taking a new hand after Johnson shuffled the deck, this time, with a faint smile to quickly vanish as he reclined back against the wall. "Sounds nice."

**October 5th, 2010**

Three days later Steve was resting in his camper, recovering from the emotional time bomb. Not sure where to go next.

This destination was supposed to be about healing, or so that's what his friends had suggested. Instead. Steve felt like a friend sucker punched him. Now all he could do was lay in bed and rarely bring himself to get up. Napping until he heard the shudder of his door.

Stirring as he tried to continue sleeping in. Trying to resume his stupor as a pair of high heels stepped through along the living space—the female agent finding Steve resting with his back to her and seated herself across from the bed.

Placing a bag beside her feet before crossing her legs, pondering her options.

Watching as he slumbered, Ada finally spoke up "Good evening, Steven."

Her voice, the seductive tone, and duplicitous pleasantry in the words awakened Steve in agitated anger. Grabbing the pistol near his pillow, he quickly faced Ada Wong but keeping his weapon from her sight as he did so.

"Hello, Ada." Shifting his gaze to the left and right of her person to see if others had joined her, realizing she came here alone. "Why'd you sneak in?"

"I walked in, you failed to move." Ada told him. "Could I not simply be paying a past associate a visit?"

Steve refuted her "First: 'cause of the many words to describe our relationship, associate or acquaintance do not adequately fit. Two: if you wanted to pay someone a special visit, I highly doubt I'd be the first on your list." unconvinced by her words. "Unless you got lost on the way."

"I can assure you, Steve, I have been searching for you specifically." Ada tried to assure him. Much to Steve's personal reluctance. "an associate you and I have in common contacted me to find you, actually."

Steve eased his grip on the weapon, still hidden, asked Ada while attempting to avoid eye contact "Who?"

"Stella, I believe was her name. She reached out to me through one of my older contacts and asked me to deliver a photo and information to you."

Steve flinched at the mention of Stella's name. Providing Ada with the validation she needed to confirm. "A photo?"

Reaching into the small bag she had carried into the camper with her, Ada pulled out a small picture. Handing it to Steve swiftly, glancing over to again fail meeting his eyes. The subject of the photo caused him to make an unsettled expression—his lips curved into disgusted revulsion, eyelids raised and his pupils dilated.

It was a ax, a giant _fucking_ ax; of the same size, texture, design, gothic style, and shape as the one he remembers from the scant memories of his final moments as a human.

The giant ax in the photo caused Steve to feel a shiver rush through him, goosebumps forming on his skin. Becoming more apparent to Ada on his arms as his sleeves were not completely covering his appentages. Flashes in his mind brought him back to that night he became infected, restrained by the large weapon until his body was transformed by Veronica's virus into a hunchbacked monster. It was NOT the same as the one he was forced to use in Antarctica, though. It had been destroyed with portions of the Antarctic facility not long after he expired—or so Blue Umbrella claimed, in a conversation with one of their members who were curious about his past experience inside it. _Assuming they were being on the level with me._

This new one was merely a replica.

The fact that someone could replicate it to such intricate detail was what unnerved him. _Who could possibly imitate it down to the smallest detail?_

"Where did this come from?"

Shrugging her shoulders, Ada told him "To be honest: I have no clue." Seeing his hand which had been out of her sight finally emerge, holding one of his pistols, relaxing on his leg. "She claimed it had been delivered to one of their safe houses by a delivery service."

Standing up, Ada walked over to a nearby window.

"Strange…" his fingers almost trembling. Steve pondered who could have the knowledge to copy the weapon completely. "How could someone do this? Not many people were there to see the original before the explosion are still alive."

"Maybe you told someone. Or Wesker could have relayed it to them, and they used the information."

"I never told anyone, except for maybe…" Finally Steve looked to her gazing out the window, for a moment, examining her body admiring the view. "What about you, Ada?"

"Me?"

"I seem to remember developing a case of loose lips around the time we were working closely."

"Oh. You mean when we were sleeping around. No. You never mentioned anything to me." Ada told him, turning towards Steve with a half smile. "Then again you never did much talking."

 _Bitch_.

Standing up, Steve responded "Convenient."

Ada shrugged her head. Finally achieving eye contact. Suggesting "Claire could have mentioned it, and it reached the ear of someone interested in you."

"Are you trying to piss me off?" Steve asked, stepping closer holding the barrel of his Samurai Edge underneath her chin. "Because it worked. And I was already hard pressed for a reason to not shoot you on the spot, already."

He had no proof she was lying, or trying to manipulate him; but neither would be out of character for Wong.

Ada remained unphased by his tactics, her nonchalant smile persisting as she maintained her eye contact with Steve. Telling him "So nice to see you remembered the training Krauser and I gave you, Steve." Surprising Burnside. "Invading my personal space, putting the gun close to my face." Tilting her head one inch to her left. "It would almost be effective if I did not know for certain you would never shoot me—if you could then you would have done so after I stole the plaga sample." Then pushed her face half an inch closer. "And made less effective when the person you are trying to intimidate has prior experience being within close proximity...some might even describe as intimate."

The words causing her former student to blush embarrassed; recalling the specific occasions she referred to, vividly. Putting his weapon down, Steve stared into her eyes."Should really word your sentences better. Would be a shame for Kennedy to hear."

"I fail to see what Leon has to do with our conversation, Steve, and doubt it would affect him greatly. You two would become good friends under the right circumstances. Perhaps in the near future, even." Infuriating him further Steve's eyes began to glow. "So you're back to pissing me off."

Steve sighed. Calming himself to avert from doing something he would regret. He asked Ada "Anything else?" while pacing back towards his bed. Putting the photo down beside his bed. "Or is there a reason you haven't left yet?"

"Yes to both. Trent did request I pass along information to you he believed prudent: Ajax may be connected with this ax." she answered him. "Given his and the Creeper's participation in both the hellmouth and Arkham incidents, it would appear more than likely another entity interested with you may be at play."

"Great…" he retorted sarcastically. Putting his weapon on a stand over his bed. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

"What are your intentions at the moment? The trail leading to you has proven to be random...inconsistent."

"What do you care?" Steve told her, sitting back in his bed. "I don't even know."

Sitting next to him Ada told him "I was curious, myself, but was on a strict schedule and not able to inquire during our previous transaction. I was surprised the moment you were free of Wesker you never ran for Redfield's sister."

"You, of all people, should know better, Ada. I can't do that." Melancholic, he told her. "Besides...I crossed paths were her at hellmouth—she didn't even recognize me."

Ada put her hands on his cheeks, forcing him to face her. "That should have been expected. You grew into a handsome one while Wesker and I were training you." Smiling softly while Steve felt his face again becoming red as he gazed into those brown eyes, recalling her "training" quite vividly with the same expression in her irises.

"Try again. If you have the chance."

Steve wondered if she was experiencing a similar memory, tempted to kiss her.

“I…” Steve did not know what to say, before he had an answer to his previous thought and Ada pressed her lips against his.

All the cares and concerns, all the loathing, all the memories of her action—her betrayal—washing away. Far from the present as the desire overcame him, overwhelming his senses with memories of the pleasure and warmth of her company.

Steve kissed her back, aggressively.

Touching her hips, he pulled Ada’s body closer.

**December 21, 2010**

_How does she talk me into these kinds of things? Why do I let her?_

Steve pondered to himself what could be possessing him to listen to Ada's advise about Redfield as the elevator ascended to the sixth floor, wondering how he should continue on with the night and whether the decision to come here was based on either faulty sentiment or an exploitable vulnerability as the seventh floor number blinked its light four times.

"Try again, she says." he said to himself while exiting the elevator. "If I ever have the chance…" Pacing down the hall to the left of the elevator, looking for the room where TerraSave members were supposedly to be attending a party.

Spotting Claire Redfield relatively easy, wearing a short skirted dress which made her stand out from the other women with her natural good looks; conversing with some of the others in a group to join her in the festivities.

 _Must be friends of her's._..quickly Steve recalled the type of woman Claire is and how she can be with people. _Must be._ _She always makes friends wherever she goes._ Then briefly recalled that friend of Redfield's that he had shot through the throat and his confidence dwindled faster.

The sight of her caused Steve to feel a loss for breath, reminiscent of their time alone on that plane.

Watching Claire with them, Steve could not ignore the sense he should be doing something in the socializing; fathoming various ways he could approach them. Placing a step forward before a thought caused him to reverse the action in shame. _What am I thinking? I was never her type, she's moved on. I should consider doing the same._

Twelve years had passed, yet it felt as if nothing changed. And Steve hated it: these feelings ripping him apart inside—the guilt for all the misplaced blame, despair and regret for all the years wasted, and unexpected joy at the sight of her face. He was past tired of them and wanted to forget...but that was far from an option, however ideal it would be.

Ready to walk away, and to disappear in the night, Steve was abacked when her eyes wandered away from one of the friends whom she had been talking to and met his own. Nearly choking from the excitement of noticing him and trepidation of realizing _Shit! She noticed me._

In an instant Claire's initial expression changed from confusion into recognition and near amusement at the sight of her associate from Bastion. If he had to guess Steve suspected her dubiety was the result of his more exposed head—having left his head cap back in his car with a majority of his unesential belongings, with his auburn hair in plain view for her to see.

 _Does she recognize me_ , he wondered before she resumed talking with her friend. _Guess not._

Pacing to another section of the room, Steve seated himself at a chair in a lounge area. Contemplating the possible outcomes of him re-entering her life for the night. _She could just demand I leave, cause a scene in the process._

Face palming, Steve muttered to himself, "What a mess I've been talked into." Smirking at his own gullibility being used by the opposite sex, again.

"Really? Must be funny to have you grinning like that." a woman's voice said, not yet employing its usual wit.

Steve looked up from the ground.

It was Claire. Standing there, next to his seat, looking like the same relative angel figure he always adored. Uttering "Claire?" without fully intending, causing his voice and tone to come out...different than he usually forced it to be. Reverting it back to almost sounding like he did on Rockfort but now older and more mature.

It stirred Claire emotionally, as, with the combination of his hair, it sounded heartbreakingly familiar. Though Redfield could not rightly understand why. She managed to suppress it. Responding "Hi Zed."

_Zed…? Oh! Right! My one-time allias._

She continued, "Without the skull cap I almost didn't recognize you at first."

At that, Steve smiled wryly. _Guess she really has moved on from me_.

"Speaking of your look, I wanted to ask: are you sure you don't have some connection to that friend of mine? You almost look like him. A cousin, perhaps?"

That time, Steve really did feel like his heart was going to burst. Implode from the shock. _So you haven't._ Then recovered his composure. Responding, "Nope. Sorry." with a more relaxed and stable expression. "I'd remember having a relative vanish like that."

"I suppose you have a point."

She quickly switched her focus. "What brings you here? I thought only Terra-Save and local socialites would be attending."

 _Crap._ He had not planned this far ahead before coming. Hesitant to respond, for fear his lies would catch up to him. "I was just bored out of my gourd, needed something to do and ended up here. Somehow."

"Bull." Claire laughed. "You must have other things to do."

"Not really. Just taking some time off then realized how tedious things are outside of work."

"Seriously...?"

They both continue a conversation onward and found themselves laughing. Only to be violently interrupted by an explosion, soon after.

Steve would not recall most afterwards, only that men armed to the teeth with semi-automatics and a small double-barrel shotgun barged in; and that he took a bullet to the head and chest, more than once. Then Claire was torn away, placed among the other hostages.

"So this is the best TerraSave has to offer? Such a let down." Steve heard one of them say.

Two leered down at his body, seeing one of Steve's eyes looking out through a crack in its lends as the fingers to one of his hands twitched.

"Hey, boss!"

"What?!"

"This one guy we shot up." Another approached, examining Steve. "He's still breathing...kinda impressive, actually." Looking at all the blood and bullet holes in him. "Took one...two...five, no, twelves shots to the chest. Two to the gut and one in the head."

"That is one STUBBORN bastard. Impressive is a bit of an understatement."

"Kurt. Watch them." The one calling the shots barked to his subordinate, directing him with a finger point.

Walking over, the leader glances at Steve to see his body. Focusing on the fresh wounds, he staggered in one step back. "Well fuck me. It's Zero! Put him down. Command said he might show up."

Steve's fingers continued to twitch. Hearing the leader say his code name caused the whole hand convulsed in anger.

The hand rushed up, making contact with one of the thug's jaw in half a second, the mercenary never had the chance to react before Steve's fist sent his head flying across the room. A few women among the hostages, aside from Claire, shrieked in horror while the men gasped with Claire; and the dead man's fellows merely reacted in hesitant shock.

Pulling himself up, swiping his hand down to throw off some of the blood from his new kill, Steve looked at the assailants—his wounds healing themselves almost entirely—to see men dressed in low grade tactical gear and balaclavas.

"Shame on you, crashing a party like that. You're not supposed to do it that way with explosions."

The leader became alarmed, raised his MP9 sub-machine gun and yelled "Open fire!"

None of the bullets landed a single hit.

Steve smirked. Wiping at his clothes, he reached into his jacket, pulling out his beretta and opened fire with a single shot to the leader's skull. Blood splattered onto the side of Kurt's mask—causing him to fumble for cover, grabbing his radio.

"Things have gone south. Send the tank!"

Dispatching them, Steve dodged the bullets again and again. Kicking them, thrashing their bodies across the room, executing them—generally annoyed by their antics—sending Kurt to join his fellows once his message had been sent.

As he continued to clean the room, Steve heard an adequate loud stop as he was killing the mercs. Looking back at the hole where the entrance had once been was promptly filled by the silhouette of a juggernaut.

The B.O.W. before Steve was reminiscent of The Creeper he destroyed in Bastion and the images he had seen when reading files on the T-00 Tyrant Mr. X, in the proportions of design but slightly shorter and with ticker muscles

Glaring at his new enemy across the room, Steve ejected his mag and reloaded the Samurai Edge before charging. Aiming his first three shots at the head then the chest, next, before landing a punch to its jaw—only to be promptly bitch slapped and sent flying back and on the floor near one of the windows.

The hulking mass did not waste time and promptly closed the distance between them as the operative was recovering.

Gripping Steve by the throat, the Tyrant hoisted him up with only one hand and squeezed. _This won't kill me any more than a single bullet, but apply the same damage enough and it will probably do the job right._

Holding him by the neck in a deadlock , the Juggernaut muttered "Good evening, 0267." so only they could hear its words. Only someone with super hearing could have heard it, but it sent a chill down Burnside's spine.

The amber eyes looking back at him, Steve felt his stomach convulsing at the memory of a similar man; then thought to himself of the resemblance. Asking with the hint of a mournful cry "Rex?"

Earning a tilt of the Tyrant's head before Claire came charging towards it with a chair in hand, thrashing it into the back of the monster holding Steve by the throat.

It did little but to annoy the B.O.W.

Then it turned ominus attention towards Claire. Tossing Steve across the room and crash into the bar stand. Hearing Claire yell out his fake name "Zed!" as the Tyrant was turning its attention towards her, ready to rip and tear as Steve was regaining his bearings to see it approaching her.

Grabbing the 12-gauge double barrel and the shotgun shells, Steve charged at the beast before it could even touch Claire. Tackling them both through the window behind the Tyrant into the rain outside.

The impact of their bodies colliding with the streets below caused bones to break in several parts of Steve's body, but the damage was not as extensive as what the juggernaut suffered had suffered—it was large like the Creeper and Mr. X yet lacked their durability.

Pulling himself up from the asphalt as his limbs and bones repaired themselves, Steve grabbed the double-barrel he dropped. Spitting out the metallic taste of his own blood in his mouth, being a source of irritation.

Raising the sawed-off shotgun Steve fired both barrels off into the juggernaut's chest, reloading as he stepped closer—pressing the weapon against the head. Exchanging one final look into the humanoid tank's amber eyes, Steve said "Goodbye." then emptied the shotgun again. Taking off the creature's head.

Discarding the scattergun on the street as the water continued to rain down on him, Steve was sad to see him go. But he needed to. Had to be done. Feeling his wounds healed and replaced by a new pain to occupy his thoughts while his mind became stagnant.

Looking up, he could see Claire among the people he saved gazing down on him and the Sleepy Hollow reject—making Steve jubilant to see she was unharmed—quickly vanishing while the others continued to watch him then his vision blurred.

His legs giving out under him.

_Chance...squandered. Well...shit._

Everything went dark from there, and the last thing Steve heard was a woman's voice say "Zed?"

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story from a another fanfic acount I have chosen to add to this site, as well. One of two I've decided to add and update on both.  
> There are seven so far, with the first being the one-shot which started the it all. I may add more in the future chapters for this sight (more than likely).  
> Hope you enjoy.


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